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A RUN THROUGH EUROPE, 



A RUN 



UJ 



THROUGH EUROPE 



BY 



Erastus C. Benedict 



4 * Quacumque incedimus, in aliquam historiam, vestigium ponimus." Lrvr. 



Nero-^ork : 



D. APPLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

443 & 445 BROADWAY. 
LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 

1860. 



No,/, 



n 

,T5U 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, 

By D. APPLETON & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
Southern District of New- York. 



TO 



EDWIN BUKK, Esq 



MOKE THAN TU1RTY YEARS 



MY PARTNER AND MY FRIEND 



I DEDICATE 



WITII BESI'EOT AND AFFECTION 



THESE SKETCHES OF 



TRAVEL IN PATHS FAMILIAR TO HIS STEPS. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I Prefatory 13 | 

CHAPTER II.— At Sea 18 

Sea Sickness 20 

Icebergs 20 

Meeting a Steamer 22 

Making the Land 23 

Landing 24 

The Voyage and the Ship 24 

LandBirds 26 

CHAPTER III.— England 27 

Liverpool 27 

London 28 

Trafalgar Square 28 

Northumberland House 29 

Monuments — Nelson 29 

Charles I George IV 30 

Westminster Hall, 31 

Westminster Abbey 32 

Parliament 34 

The Tunnel 38 

The Streets— The River 39 

CHAPTER IV— France 41 

Folkestone to Boulogne 41 

Napoleon III 42 

His Revolution 43 

Paris 43 

Diligence 4G 

Face of the Country 48 

Women at Work in the Fields. . 50 

Donkeys 50 

Peasant Girls '. . 51 

Teams 51 

Vineyards 52 

Railroads 53 

Tunnels 53 

Marseilles 54 

The People 54 

Napoleon Tower 55 

Cours Bonaparte 55 

Prado 55 

Country Houses 56 

South of France 56 

Drive to Nice 57 

Cannes 58 

Landing of Napoleon from Elba. 58 



PAGE. 

CHAPTER V— Italy— Nice to Civi- 

ta Vecchia 59 

Washerwomen 60 

Nice 60 

Cornice Road 61 

Ligurian Alps 61 

Monaco 61 

Tropha;a August! 62 

Ancient Towns 62 

Painted Houses 63 

Peasant Girls 63 

Courier Diligence 64 

Conductor a Postmaster 64 

Distributing his Mails 64 

Shrines and Images 65 

Genoa in the Distance 65 

Cogoletto 66 

Columbus 66 

Genoa 67 

Local Customs 67 

Women 67 

Palaces 68 

Churches 69 

Leghorn 71 

Pisa 71 

Cathedral 71 

Leaning Tower 72 

Baptistery 73 

Campo Santo 73 

Steamer to Civita Vecchia 74 

Storm 74 

Permits to Land 75 

CHAPTER VI. — States of the 

Church — Rome 76 

Fear of Brigands 76 

Beggars 76 

Passports 77 

Laborers in the Fields 77 

Laborers in the Market-place. ... 78 

Roman Oxen 79 

Drivers 79 

Buffaloes — Goats — Sheep 79 

First Sight of St. Peter's 80 

Rome 80 

French Soldiers 80 

Temporal Power of the Pope 80 



Till 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Priests and Monks SI 

Princely Wedding 82 

Santa Maria Maggiore 82 

Column of the Virgin 82 

The Wedding Cortege 82 

The New Married Pair at St. 

Peter's 83 

Beggars 84 

Newspapers 84 

Churches 86 

Basilicas 86 

Pantheon S6 

St. Mary of the Angels 86 

St. Bruno 86 

The Priorato 87 

Capuchin Church 87 

Guido's Michael 87 

Artistic Libels 87 

Sistine Chapel 88 

High Mass there 88 

The Cardinals 88 

The Ceremony. 88 

ThePope 89 

St. Peter's 80 

Mosaic Paintings 91 

ItsCost 92 

St. Paul's 93 

Benedictine Cloisters 94 

Malaria 94 

St. John Lateran 94 

Corpus Domini 95 

Relics 96 

Appian Way 96 

Monuments 96 

Apostle Paul 97 

Columbaria 98 

St. Sebastian's 98 

Footprint of the Savior 9!) 

Catacombs 99 

Catacombs of the Capuchins. . . . 100 

CHAPTER VII.— Roman Education 103 

University of Rome 105 

Father Secchi 105 

Roman College 106 

Course of Studies 108 

Library 110 

Systems of Instruction 110 

Vacations 110 

College of the Propaganda 110 

Other Seminaries Ill 

Regionary Schools Ill 

Christian Brothers 112 

Their Vows 112 

Their Numbers 112 

Their Instruction 113 

Emperor of Christian Doctrine. . 114 

Night Schools 115 

Industrial Schools 115 

SanMichele 115 

CHAPTER VIII. — Excursion to 

Tivoli 117 

Velian Hill 118 

Tribunes of the People 119 

Slavery 119 



PAGE. 

Virginia 120 

Plautian Tomb 121 

Lake Tartarus 121 

Solfatara 122 

Adrian's Villa 122 

Adrian 123 

The Ruins 124 

Tivoli 125 

Ancient Villas 125 

. Temple of the Sybil 126 

The Falls 126 

Opening of the Artificial Fall. . . 128 
Cascatelles of Tivoli 129 

CHAPTER IX Palaces-Museums 

—Art 130 

The Vatican 130 

Galleries and Collections 131 

Library 132 

Gardens 133 

Sistine Chapel 133 

The Quirinal 134 

Election of the Pope 134 

Billiard Room 135 

Pope's Table 135 

His Personal Apartments 136 

Gardens 136 

Capitoline Hill 136 

Statues — Castor and Pollux — 

Marcus Aurcliua 136 

The Capitol 137 

The Collections of Art 137 

The Lateran Palace 137 

The Old Masters 138 

Villa Borghese 140 

The Bonapartes 141 

The Roman Republic, 184S 142 

Borghese Family 142 

Statue of Pauline 142 

Private Palaces 143 

Copying Paintings 143 

CHAPTER X The Ruins of Rome. 145 

The Seven Hills 145 

Christianized Ruins 146 

Forums 147 

Coliseum 147 

Palace of the Cassars 148 

Wealth of the Ancients 148 

Ancient Art , 149 

Public Roads 149 

Aqueducts 150 

Sewers 151 

Columns 151 

Obelisks 152 

Arches 153 

Mamertine Prison 154 

Scalae Gemonise 155 

CHAPTER XI Roman Religion.. 157 

Its Characteristics 158 

Ceremonies and Rites 159 

Imitations of Jewish 161 

Traditions and Memorials 1C5 

Characteristic Evils 167 

The Temporal Power : 168 

Unitv of Faith 169 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Quietism 1T0 

Idolatry 171 

Italian Credulity 1T'2 

Loretto 173 

Santa Casa 174 

Empress Helena 174 

Discovery of the True Cross 174 

Treasures of Santa Casa 170 

Changes in the Church 178 

St. Peter's Letter to Pepin 17!) 

CHAPTER XII Rome to Naples. . 181 

Coliseum by Moonlight 1S1 

St. Peter's in the Evening 181 

Malaria — Maremma 182 

Winter in Italy 183 

Society in Italy 183 

Leaving Rome 1S4 

The Campagna 185 

Albano — Laricia 186 

Tomb of the Horatii ISO 

Uncertainty of Traditions 1S7 

Our Papal Dragoon 1S8 

Runaway Donkey 1S8 

Pontine Marshes 1S9 

Appii Forum 101 

St. Paul 191 

Terracina 192 

Peasants in the Morning 193 

Heroic Localities 194 

Fondi 195 

Gaeta 196 

Cicero 196 

Marius 198 

Garigliano 198 

Chevalier Bayard 198 

Peasant Women 198 

Capua 199 

Aversa 199 

CHAPTER XIII Naples 201 

Hotels— Fleas 201 

Chiaia 202 

Villa Reale 202 

School of Virgil 204 

The Citv 205 

Villa of Lucullus 206 

Solfatara 207 

Monte Nuovo 207 

Avernus 207 

Puzzuoli 20S 

Sinking of the Shores 208 

Posilippo 208 

Cemetery 209 

Confraternities 209 

Museum 210 

CHAPTER XIV Pompeii 213 

Earthquakes 215 

Destru"tion of the City 216 

House of Diomede 220 

HisFamily 220 

Temple of Isi? 220 

The Pope at Pompeii 221 

The Amphitheatre 221 

Gladiators 223 

Life in Ancient Italy 224 

Vices 225 

1* 



PAGE. 

The Streets of Pompeii 226 

Julia Felix 22T 

The Pope at the Amphitheatre.. . 228 
Vesuvius 228 

CHAPTER XV. — Naples to Flor- 
ence 231 

The Bay 234 

Our Fellow Passengers 236 

Civita Vecchia 237 

Martello Towers 237 

Elba 238 

Leghorn 23S 

Valley of the Arno 239 

CHAPTER XVI Florence 240 

Straw Manufactures 240 

Flower Girls 241 

Agriculture 242 

Etruscans 242 

Architecture , . 243 

Bridges 244 

Great Men 244 

Churches 245 

Cathedral 245 

Campanile — Baptistry — Baptism 246 

Bronze Doors 246 

Santa Croce 247 

I.H.S 247 

St. Bernardino 24T 

Gambling 247 

TheCascine 247 

Toleration 24S 

Fiesole 249 

Valley of the Arno 250 

View of the City 250 

Procession of Corpus Domini 251 

Galleries of Art 252 

Uffizii 252 

The Tribune 252 

Pitti Palace 253 

Museum — Nat. History 254 

Powers' Studio 254 

Court of Cassation 254 

Railroads in Italy 255 

Excommunicating them 255 

Leaving Florence 257 

Pass of La Futa 258 

Winter in the Appenines 259 

Scenery American 259 

States of the Church. 260 

CHAPTER XVII. — States of the 

Church— Bologna 261 

Music of the Whip 261 

Bologna 262 

Hotel San Marco 262 

Leaning Towers 203 

People and Manners 264 

Learned Women 265 

The University — Degrees 268 

Great Men 268 

San Michele in Bosco 270 

Academy of Arts 272 

St. Luke's Portrait of the Virgin. 274 
Portico of Monte della Guardia. . 275 

Ferrara 275 

Prison of Tasso 276 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Calvin 277 

Ferry Across the Po 277 

Austrian Custom House 278 

CHAPTER XVIII.— Austrian Italy. 279 

Padua by Night 279 

Venice 280 

Piazza San Marco 281 

Silent City 281 

Origin of Venice 282 

Grand Canal 2S3 

Bridges 283 

The Doges 284 

Koine and Venice 2S5 

St. Mark's Church 2SG 

Campanile 2S6 

Shops 2S7 

"Wells— Water Porters— Pigeons 2S7 

Palace of the Doge , 28S 

Prisons— Bridge of Sighs 2S9 

Paintings 290 

Malice of Artists 290 

Fra Angelico 291 

Academy of Arts 292 

Gondolas 293 

Gondoliers 294 

Beggars 294 

Church of the Frati 295 

Monuments 295 

Passage to Trieste 297 

Beautiful Morning View 29S 

Kindness of St. Helena 299 

CHAPTER XIX.— Austria— Trieste 300 

Trieste 200 

Hotel 300 

Retrospect from Trieste 301 

Her Military Disasters 302 

Population Mixed 303 

Toleration 303 

Oxen in the C.ty 304 

Departure for Laybach 305 

Optschiua 305 

View from the East 306 

Julian Alps 306 

Lumber Wagons 307 

Laybach 308 

Sir Humphrey Davy 309 

Sights of Carniola 308 

Lake Zirknitz 308 

Grotto of Kleinhausel 309 

Congress of Laybach 310 

German Railroad 310 

Smokers 311 

Variety of Scenery 311 

Cilly 312 

Gratz 313 

Transfer to Diligence 313 

The Sommtring Pass by Night.. 313 

CHAPTER XX Vienna 315 

Vienna 315 

The Prater 317 

Holidays 317 

Libraries 317 

Collections 318 

Church of the Augustines 319 



PAGE. 

Monument to the Archduchess. . 319 

Maria Theresa 321 

Her Appeal to Hungary 322 

Joseph II 323 

Education in Austria 323 

Toleration - 3-5 

Sunday , 327 

St. Stephen's Church — Monu- 
ments 327 

Defeat of Cara Mustapha 328 

Burial of the Royal Family 329 

Mnriazell 329 

Wagram 333 

Napoleon in Austria 333 

Brunn 333 

Valley of the Elbe 333 

Women in the Fields 334 

CHAPTER XXI.-Bohemia--Prague 335 

Origin of Prague 335 

Libussa — Premislas 335 

Hradschin 336, 346 

Kleinseite 336 

The Bridge 337 

1 k fence of it by Plachy 337 

Statues 33S 

Brunslik 33S 

St. John Nepomuk 339 

Bohemian Fashion 339 

Jews of Prague 340 

Old Synagogue 342 

Tein Church 344 

University 344 

White Tower— Daliborka 346 

The Chapter 347 

St. Vitus' Church— Tombs and 

Monuments 347 

Tomb of St. John Nepomuk 34S 

Ziska's Hill 349 

John Huss 349 

Jerome of Prague 350 

Wicklif, Huss, and Luther 351 

Ctraquiata 351 

Zi f ka 351 

Wenceslaus— SigUmund 352 

Invincible Brethren 352 

Death of Ziska 353 

Religious Strifes 353 

Valley of the Moldau and the 

Elbe 355 

Houses 356 

National Colors 356 

CHAPTER XXIL— Saxony— Dres- 
den — Leipzic 357 

Saxon Switzerland 357 

Robber Knights 359 

Pirna 359 

General Moreau 360 

Fair in Dresden 361 

War in 1313 362 

Education in Saxony 363 

Religion 363 

Dresden 364 

Galleries and Collections 365 

Frauenkirche 366 



TABLE OF CONTEXTS. 



PAGE. 

Leipsic 366 

Battles of Leipsic 367 

Fall of Napoleon 369 

Gustavus Adolphus 369 

The University of Leipsic 370 

Churches — Cemetery 372 

Auerbach's Wine-Cellar 373 

CHAPTER XXIII.--Prussia--Berlin 375 

Situation of Berlin 375 

Streets — Statues 376 

Museum 377 

Library 378 

New Museum 378 

Gardens 380 

Palace 380 

Saxe Altenburg 381 

CHAPTER XXIV Bavaria — Nu- 
remberg — Munich 381 

Nuremberg 3S1 

Siege of 382 

Houses— Castle 383 

Caspar Haustr — Albert Durer. . 384 
Art-Union — Hans Sachs — Li- 
brary 385 

Churches 385 

St. Sebald— St. Laurent -387 

Fountains 388 

Religion 388 

Augsburg 389 

Munich 3S9 

King Lewis 389 

Glyptothec — Pinacothec 389 

Temple of Fame 391 

Statue of Bavaria •. . . . . 391 

Library 392 

Ludwig Street 392 

University 393 

Old Palace— New Palace 393 

Hall of Beauties 394 

Lola Montes 394 

Hofgarten 395 

Lindau 396 

CHAPTER XXV Switzerland.... 397 

Zurich 397 

Zwingle 398 

The Country and People 399 

Haying 400 

Baden 401 

Reliable Diligence System 401 

Berne 401 

Bears 402 

Lausanne 402 

Geneva — The Swks 403 

Language and Religion 405 

The City 406 

Calvia 406 

Rousseau 406 

Local Celebrities 407 

Cathedral 40S 

To Chamouni 408 

Anemasse — Alps—Cascades .... 408 

Waterfall of Arpenas 409 

Sallenches 409 

Alpine Horn 410 



PAGE. 

Chamouni 411 

Back to Geneva 412 

Circuit of the Lake 412 

Vilkneuve 414 

Chillon 414 

Vevay 416 

Ouchy 416 

Lausanne 416 

Cathedral 417 

Schools 417 

Neufchatel 417 

Munsterthal 419 

Glaciers 420 

Basle 420 

Hotel— Three Kings 421 

Erasmus — Holbein 421 

Dance of Death 422 

CHAPTER XXVI The Rhine. .. . 424 

Strasburg 424 

Squares 425 

Jews 425 

Cathedral 425 

Strasburg Pies 426 

Guttenberg 428 

Baden Baden 429 

Spa Buildings 430 

Gambling 431 

Heidelberg 431 

Manheim — Darmstadt 432 

Frankfort — Hockheim 432 

Wiesbaden 433 

Scene at the Well 433 

Gambling 434 

Hot Springs 435 

Biberich 435 

The Rhine 436 

Johannisberg 436 

Robbers of the Rhine 437 

Pet Turtles 437 

Cologne 437 

Cathedral 438 

Rubens — Crucifixion of St. Peter 440 

CHAPTER XXVII. — The Low 

Countries 442 

Arnheim 442 

Rotterdam 443 

Delft 443 

Old Church — New Church 444 

Van Tromp — Hein — Grotius — 

William 1 444 

Treckschuit 445 

Hague 445 

Galleries and Museum 445 

Palace — Palace in the Wood 446 

Scheveling 447 

Schools 448 

Fishwomen 448 

Leyden 449 

Amsterdam 450 

Jews' Quarter 450 

Diamond Cutting 451 

Palace 451 

Holland 452 

Harlem Lake 452 



Xll 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

TheDutch 453 

Dort 454 

Breda 455 

Antwerp 456 

Keligiou — Cathedral 457 

Rubens 453, 400 

Church of St. James 458 

" St. Paul 450 

Purgatory — Calvary 459 

Merchants' Exchange 459 

Artists. 460 

Matsys 462 

Mechlin — Malines 463 

Brussels 463 

The Gueux 464 

Statues 164 

Manikin Statue 465 

CHAPTER XXVIII.— Paris Revis- 
ited 470 

Parisian Lite 472 

Government of Napoleon III. . . 473 

The French 475 

Pere la Chase 476 

Glory of France 47S 

Versailles 479 

Trianon — Napoleon and Jose- 
phine 4S0 

Invalide3 4S1 

Tuilleries 482 

Luxembourg 482 

Churches 4s2 

Sights 482 

CHAPTER XXIX. -England Revis- 
ited — Crossing the Channel . . 483 

Crazy Woman 483 

Dover Castle and Cliffs 484 

London Revisited 485 

Yankee Doodle 4S5 

Growth of London 4S7 

Sights 4S8 

Javelin Men 4S9 

House of Commons 490 

Mr. Cobden 491 

House of Lords 492 

Decimal Coinage 492 

Westminster Hall 493 

Court of Admiralty 494 

Doctors' Commons 494 

The Downs 494 

Brighton 495 

Portsmouth 495 

The Royal George 496 

Spithead 496 

Isle of Wight 496 

Osborne House 497 

Carisbrook Castle 497 

Salisbury 498 

Old Sarum 498 

Reform Bill 499 

Stonehenge 499 

Hare-Hunting 500 

Wilton 501 

Sidney Herbert 501 

Oxford 502 



PAGE- 

Political Refugee 505 

Old Guide 506 

Dr. Whewell 506 

Birmingham 509 

Derby— Sheffield— Mobs 510 

York 511 

Newcastle 512 

Richard Grainger 513 

Lords Eldon and Stowell 514 

Alnwick Castle 514 

CHAPTER XXX Scotland 518 

Abbotsford 518 

Melrose Abbey 520 

Edinburgh 524 

Education 525 

Hospitals 526 

Glasgow 527 

Land of Burns 528 

Burns 529 

Mrs. Begg 532 

CHAPTER XXXI Ireland 533 

Belfast 534 

Linen Trade 534 

Ballymena 535 

Face of the Country 535 

Dundalk ." 536 

Houses 535 

Edward Bruce 536 

Battle of the Boync 536 

James II 536 

Drogheda 536 

Lady Tyrconnel 537 

Oppression of the Irish 537 

Dublin 533 

Trinity College 538 

Parliament House 538 

Bank of Ireland 538 

Castle 539 

Vice-Regal Chapel 539 

Other Public Buildings 540 

Monuments — Wellington — Nel- 
son 541 

Squares and Parks. 541 

CHAPTER XXXII Wales 542 

Crossing the Irish Channel 54'2 

Holyhead — Anglesea 542 

The Welsh 543 

Menai Strait 543 

Beaumaris 5-14 

Bridges — Tubular and Suspen- 
sion 544 

Caernarvon Castle 544 

Birth of Edward II 544 

Edwardl 546 

His Cruelty 546 

Llewellyn 546 

The Bards 547 

Conway Castle 547 

Gwrvch Castle 548 

Chester 549 

Conclusion 549 

Progress and Reform 550 

Popular Suffrage 551 

England and America 552 



^ 



A RUN THROUGH EUROPE. 



€\%$ttt first. 

prefatory. 
Gentle Reader : 

THE letters which are reprinted in the following chap- 
ters, were written for my pleasure and not yours. 
They are now published for your benefit and not mine. 
This prefatory chapter is written and published for our 
common benefit. Yours, that you may know in advance 
something of the character of the book — mine, that I may 
say how it came to be written, and answer the pertinent 
question " Why publish another book of travels over ground 
made dusty by the footsteps of many generations of travel- 
lers?" 

If I had known of another book like it — one covering 
so much ground, in so few pages — one that might with so 
little labor remind the returned traveller of his joys abroad, 
or that might be so useful to many as a preparation for 
wandering through the same scenes, and so likely to sharpen, 
without satisfying the desire to see the Old World, this bcok 
would never have been published. 

A severe attack of the throat induced me to visit the Old ^ 



14 WHERE AVE WENT. 

World. To double my pleasure, I took my wife with me. 
The demands of an inexorable profession compelled me to 
make my absence short, and I therefore determined to make 
my excursion one of observation, not of discovery. I chose 
to look at things rather than to make the acquaintance of 
men — to devote less time to mortal and living celebrities and 
more to the vestiges of dead immortals. 

I did not even present my letters of introduction, because 
necessary civilities would consume my time and restrain my 
freedom. I chose rather to rely upon the best couriers, 
valets, and cicerones, and to utilize my time, by adopting 
the most expeditious, the most open and the least fatiguing 
modes of locomotion, and to trust to my own eyes and reflec- 
tions, directed with focal energy to characteristic objects and 
events. I could thus go farther and see more, and my im- 
pressions would be deep and lasting, although quickly made. 

We sought no new and untrodden paths — we hunted no 
new lions and we penetrated no new jungles. We never once 
thought of seeking or finding a new ancient ruin, or new works 
of art by the old masters. With open eyes and pondering 
thoughts we went where others had been before us — to Eng- 
land, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and to Holland and 
Germany, the homes of our ancestors, and to beautiful 
France and Alpine Switzerland. We hurried forward to 
great Italy — mother of nations — her ruins, her mosses, her 
rnouraing weeds and her immortal glories, and then onward 
to the Gothic and Sclavic peoples of southern, eastern and 
central Europe, wandering from country to country till we 
had passed through all these great historic nations of Europe. 
We can hardly believe our own experience as we recall the 
distances we have traversed — the modes of travel we have 
adopted — the cities, the countries, the seas, the rivers — the 
battle-grounds of peace as well as of war, celebrated in 
ancient and modern history, and the novelties and wonders of 



BENEFIT OF THE EXCURSION. 15 

nature and art, that we have seen in passing twice over ninety 
degrees of longitude and sixteen degrees of latitude — be- 
tween New- York and Vienna, between Pompeii and Edin- 
burgh, from Boulogne to Marseilles, from Naples to Berlin, 
from Leipsic to Chamouni, from Geneva to Amsterdam, from 
the Isle of Wight to Glasgow, and from Lough Neagh to 
Dublin. We passed through five-and-twenty kingdoms and 
sovereignties, and all in the genial, beautiful, and luxuriant 
time of the year. 

Familiar as this tour is in the literature of travelling, it 
has nevertheless been to us a wonderful panorama, viewed 
under circumstances of great advantage. It has filled our 
whole lives with pleasant memories and interesting associa- 
tions. I say our whole lives, for it even throws a reflex 
light upon the scenes which the studies of youth, as well as 
the general reading and current news of later life, had 
dressed in imaginary apparel. We see them now more as 
they are, and we look upon them with a more friendly famil- 
iarity. 

Nothing was farther from my mind when I went or when 
I returned than publishing a book of these rapid and com- 
monplace travels. I wrote to my family — many hundred 
miles apart in several States — using the columns of a public 
journal read by them all. Letters thus written abroad, and 
printed for the common benefit, and others written from 
copious notes and fresh memories, with some amplification, 
have, by my publisher and myself, been here made into a 
book. 

This has been done, not merely to show, as it does, what 
may be seen and done in a summer vacation, nor yet to 
present, in one small volume, anything more than a running 
and sketchy account of the great highways of Christian 
travel. But feeling that my mind had opened to a larger 
horizon, and my heart softened to a more genial humanity 






16 AMERICAN TRAVELLERS ABROAD. 

as I went on, over the footprints of so many generations of 
the present and so many more generations of the past, 
striking in their diversity, yet everywhere the same in the 
one blood of which all the nations are made, and finding 
that my prejudices, one after another, were conquered or 
enfeebled — when I came to look over what I had written I 
thought, as some others did, that it might be in like manner 
useful to those who should read it, and that it might well 
enough be published. 

By a long and perilous voyage alone, can we visit the 
historical world, yet what increasing thousands swell the 
number of American travellers in Europe ! A friend of mine 
declares he will not go, it is so vulgar. The distinction, he * 
says, is now in staying at home. I rejoice in this increasing 9 

■ desire to visit the Old World. I see in it inevitable culti- 
vation and instruction, which cannot come otherwise, and 
which, if properly gratified, must be of great value to our 
national character, in opening our eyes wider — in reducing 

s our pretensions — in moderating our boasts — letting some of 
the gas out of our conceit and some of the hyperbole out 
of our vanity, and teaching us that there are other nations 
which are growing and prosperous, other people that are 
thrifty and contented, and other forms of government that 
secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to the 
peaceable and the good. It seems to me that no right- 
minded American can return from Europe and its routine — 
its marks of the collar — without an affectionate lono-in^ to 
greet again our free and easy shores, nor without a deepened 
conviction that our form of government is, beyond perad- 
venture, the best for us — long live the Republic! — nor 
without being convinced that it would not be the best for 
the present or even the next generation of any of the great 
monarchical nations of Europe, even if they desired il, and 
that those who desire it are in so small a minority that, on 



AMERICA FOR FREEDOM. 17 

our own principles, they are not entitled to change their 
form of government for ours except by coming hither and 
adopting congenial institutions — 

"In one great clime 
Whose vigorous offspring, by dividing ocean, 
Are kept apart, and nursed in tbe devotion 
Of freedom, which their fathers fought for, and 
Bequeathed — a heritage of heart and hand, 
And proud distinction from each other land." 



Cftagiu ^K0uK 



IT is only those who have everything to do that find time 
to do anything, so I, having nothing to do, can hardly 
find time to keep my promise of giving you a letter, from time 
to time, with such details of description and reflection as may 
be interesting to you, although suggested by scenes and 
events that have been described times without number. 

Our sailing day was one of those pelting and driving 
northeast storms, which show no mercy to man or beast, 
yet our large number of passengers (207 in the cabin), drew 
on board a great number of kind friends and sobbing rela- 
tives, to give the parting grasp of affection and friendship. 
All being driven in-doors by the storm, the saloons were 
crowded to suffocation and misery, till the sharp and con- 
tradictory cry, " All ashore that's a-going," instead of all 
ashore that are not going, left us room to turn round and see 
each other. We, however, went no farther than the quar- 
antine ground at Staten Island. 

Note — The familiar, epistolary style has been preserved, though the form of chap- 
ters has been substituted for that of Utters. 



AT SEA — OUR COURSE. 19 

The storm abated on Saturday evening, but it was not 
till Sunday morning, after breakfast, that we could go to 
sea — and then we were so many, already somewhat ac- 
quainted by sight, and we gathered so happily on the hurri- 
cane deck like a company bound up the Hudson, or through 
the Sound, that we could not look sad nor hardly call 
up the appropriate solemnity of bidding our native land 
good-bye. As it faded away over the blue waters, came soon 
the thoughts that we might never again see it, nor those dear 
ones left behind, who were not cheered in their sad reflections 
by our hopes of enjoyment in seeing among the scenes 
of the proud Old World beyond the deep — the home of our 
ancestors — the home of our language and literature — and 
the still greater novelties in the Continental World, where 
a hundred generations of men have wrought out the 
stories of sacred and profane history, in forms and manifesta- 
tions unlike those with which our portion of the race have 
made their marks along the highway of time. 

At nine o'clock we weighed the ponderous anchor, and 
carefully winding our way through the channels of the lower 
bay, we stood out to sea. After getting a proper offing 
from Long Island, the captain gave the quartermaster the 
course, east-half-north — as nearly as possible a direct line 
for Cape Clear — which course we kept till we saw Cape 
Clear dead ahead, on the ninth day, with only a single de- 
viation caused by fields of floating ice, which, of course, 
we would not attempt to penetrate. Floating ice is bad 
enough in river and lake navigation, but at sea, in latitude 
forty-eight, the fields of floating ice that come down from 
the polar seas, no paddle-wheel can encounter without an 
almost certainty of destruction. 

The blow of the northeaster that had vexed the waters had 
subsided before the rain ceased, and of course the pelting of 
the rain had subdued the sea ; but there was left a majestic 



20 SEA-SICKNESS ICEBERGS. 

ground swell through which our boat reeled in such a style 
as to make us all sea-sick before the dinner hour. I say all, 
but there were a few old sea-rangers who were not sick at all 
during the voyage. Ourselves were sick a little each a part 
of two days, and nothing more, but many were dreadfully 

sick much longer. Prof. P lay during the heavy rain 

and fog of the first few days on the open deck, with his 
overcoat and umbrella only, being unable to bear the con- 
fined air of the stateroom or to taste food. He did not 
Qj come to the table till the day before we got in. Many others 
were sick till we got inside of Cape Clear. All the ladies 

were sick, M the least of any. For several days she 

was the only lady at the table. Indeed, in all things she 
has shown herself a capital sailor, much better than I 
expected, walking the deck like an old salt in all weathers 
with as sure a foot and head as if she had been cradled on 
the crests of the waves. Many of the others fully determined 
if they ever returned to America it should be by the way of 
Behring's straits or the submarine telegraph. 

On our third day, in the morning, we had the last 
glimpse of land — the highlands of Newfoundland — and at 
about eleven a. m., saw the first iceberg, from fifty to 
seventy-five feet high, and covering, perhaps, some five acres. 
Soon we saw others more beautiful and awful. One seemed 
to be two as it were, with a natural bridge from one to the 
other. Another was cavernous, seeming to present to us 
the grand entrance to the world of darkness and eternal 
night. One was a vast amphitheatre of glittering ice — its 
entrance toward the ship, so that we could look in and see its 
glassy and placid lake, by which seals and grizzly bears may 
have made their toilets, and admired themselves as they sat 
on its benches of ice, or gnashed their teeth at each other 
across its blue depths. After a while came more, in the fog 
and mist, pyramids and churches, &c. Soon a little breeze 



ICEBERGS FIELDS OF ICE. 21 

cleared away the fog, and the clouds lifted, and our icebergs 
had floated far astern, and were seen in this quarter and that, 
relieved against a fair sky on the very horizon, with an effect 
surprising, sublime, and beautiful. The imagination rapidly 
gave them names and charactei's as, looked at in one direc- 
tion or another, they showed different groups and combina- 
tions. Now we saw the pyramids in the desert, raising 
their sharp summits to the skies — now the icy 

" Summits split and rent, 
Formed turret, dome, and battlement," 

and we looked upon some ruined Tadmor in the wilderness, 
with colonnades and arches and cornice and frieze. At another 
time we seemed to look into the portals of the celestial city, 
"with the glimpses a saint has of heaven in his dreams." 
One, that all had named a Gothic church as it passed us, 
now took a close resemblance to St. Paul's in London, 
and seemed to be a grand cathedral temple of the realms 
above, as its spires; and domes, and towers, were more dimly 
seen in the pure evening sky. 

We came upon a field of floating ice, that called to mind 
the perils of the northern explorers. We ran along to the 
southward of it for about one hundred and fifty miles. It 
seemed impenetrable like a rocky ice-bound coast. Some 
shipmasters on board declared that they could see at a dis- 
tance, on the other side of us, the reflection on the clouds of 
another field, so that as the Israelites had walls of water 
through which they passed on dry land, so we had walls of 
ice through which we passed on a safe and quiet sea. 
When we discerned it we were five miles from it, and the ship 
was immediately put two or three points more to the south- 
ward, which gave us a considerable southing in the course 
of the night, and of course delayed us somewhat in getting 
back to the northward. Had we been in waters abounding 
in small islands and rocks, not laid down on any chart, how 



22 MEETING A STEAMER. 

we should have slowly picked our way along in the fog 
and the night, but now, in a sea scattered all over with 
unknown floating islands and rocks of ice, we dashed on in 
the darkness and the thick mist, always at the top of our 
speed ! 

Having passed this danger we had a clear sky and sea, 
and if it had not been for our leviathan ship, that made " the 
deep to boil like a pot," there would have been nothing to 
disturb the solitude of its desert or the placidity of its 
lake-like cairn, except the small whales that, here and there, 
spouted up from the face of the waves their little jets of 
water as they rose for breath. 

On Sunday it was so warm, so calm, and so bright, that 
an awning was necessary in latitude fifty. The ship, however, 
rolled worse than ever, the wheels were alternately out of 
water and submerged, by which much of our power was 
wasted, and we were of course delayed. We had divine 
service twice ; once by Dr. Stearns, Presbyterian, and once 
by Mr. Dix, Episcopalian, attended and listened to with 
apparent interest by most of the passengers. 

The directness of our course was happily shown by our 
meeting the Atlantic, another steamer of the Collins Line, 
on our eighth day out — the two, when first seen, approaching 
each other in parallels not more than two miles apart. At 
three p. M. the cry ran through the ship, "The Atlantic is com- 
ing." All rushed on deck, and there, indeed, she was, almost 
directly ahead. The decks and paddle-boxes of both ships 
were crowded with passengers to see the sisters welcome 
each other as they were promenading the highway of nations. 
Each vessel ran up to the top of her highest spar a flag 
rolled up in a small ball, and tied with a slip-knot, from which 
a line reached the deck. As we were rolling, so the Atlan- 
tic was pitching. As she came nearly alongside, she rose on 
the swell, as it were to show with what queenly pride she 



MAKING THE LAND. 23 

walked the seas, and the next moment with a graceful and 
dignified stoop, she courtesied to her younger sister with 
affectionate respect. A pull at the line, and in an instant 
the flags streamed from the mast, and the report of our guns 
went booming over a sea that sent back no echo. It was a 
beautiful incident, that you may go to sea many years and 
not see. I say she came nearly alongside, but she did not 
come so near that we could communicate. That would take 
time, and everything must be sacrificed to that on these pas- 
sages. If this continues so, some invention must be made 
by which papers can be exchanged without causing delay. In 
our case we were twenty days behind the European news, 
and our curiosity was of course very great. 

Our last day out of sight of land, was beautiful beyond 
any other we had. A clear summer heaven, clouds of 
chased silver floating gently in its sapphire depths, a breeze 
that tipped every wave with white — the sea seemed to be 
beaming all over with smiles, and the waves looked like so 
many white-maned horses careering and frolicking over a roll- 
ing green prairie of boundless extent. In the morning the mate 
said we should see land about half-past three, p. m. — at thirty- 
five minutes past three, the shadowy outline of the highlands 
of Ireland began to be visible among the clouds that skirted 
the horizon, and when we came out from dinner the whole 
range of those highlands and the rocky shore lay before us as 
distinctly as you see the Catskills from the Hudson. The 
resemblance to the Catskill range in outline is quite remark- 
able. The strata of the rocks were clearly visible. I do 
not know the character of the rock geologically. 

We were soon ruuning under the lee of those highlands 
with a smooth sea, and our ship on an even keel, with a 
bone in her ivory teeth, rushed through the water till the 
wind, fairly distanced, bolted from the course and made no 
effort to keep up with us. The coast of Wales in the morn- 



24 LANDING THE VOYAGE AND THE SHIP. 

ing, and Anglesea, and Holyhead, and taking a pilot, and 
learning the news of the bombardment of Odessa, and the 
constant throwing the lead, as the tide was low, used up the 
day. At night, by arrangements which were perfectly in- 
famous, more than 200 passengers were tumbled into a little 
no-decked canoe steamer, and thence spilled out upon the dock, 
at the foot of a high wall and a locked gate, two miles from 
cabs, and carriages, and hotels. The dew on our robes 
was heavy and chill. At half-past ten at night lodgings 
were at length secured. We should have been snugly in our 
hotels at half-past seven, for a comfortable supper. 

Our voyage has been one of most remarkable calmness. 
The captain has crossed the ocean more than one hundred 
and thirty times, and has never had an accident, but says he 
has never known such a voyage as this — the entire voyage 
having been without a gale and almost without a breeze — 
most of the voyage, not wind enough astir to drive its cur- 
rents into our submarine cyclopean furnaces for cool breath 
and ventilation, and draught for the fires. It was millpond 
sailing, as the captain said. We rushed straight on over the 
swelling and restless brine — our top-gallant masts swaying and 
swinging through an arc of about twenty, sometimes thirty 
degrees. If we had been the pets of the storm-king he could 
not have more kindly hushed his infant tempests and rocked 
them to sleep than he did. As we had about eleven degrees 
of northing to make, we went up about one degree a day, and 
soon got in a very cold latitude and an unfrequented region, 
where we very rarely saw a sail to show us that we were not 
alone in the world of waters. 

I must not forget to give you some idea of our home on 
the ocean wave and our life on the rolling deep. The ship 
had comparatively little cargo, yet the captain said he sup- 
posed her weight could not be less than seven thousand tons. 
Her usual velocity is about thirteen miles an hour. Think 



LIFE ON BOARD. 25 

of the fearful momentum of such a moving mass ! Meeting 
any ordinary vessel in collision, she would of course pass 
through her or over her without feeling the shock. She 
burned on one day ninety-six tons anthracite coal — four 
tons an hour ! The dining saloon is on the main deck and 
seats easily one hundred and fifty, and between decks are the 
main-cabin saloon, the ladies' saloon, and the forward saloon, 
all fitted and furnished like a gentleman's parlor in the Fifth 
Avenue, except that the carved work, and gilding, and the 
fine ornamental rosewood, satin-wood, and fret work, and 
tracery, and mirrors, are more abundant, and give an air of 
almost too much expense and luxury. In the between decks, 
also on the sides of the ship, are the state-rooms, each with two 
berths, one fixed settee, one bull's eye window, and the usual 
toilet conveniences. We breakfasted from half-past eight 
to eleven, a. m. — each one ordering his breakfast to suit 
himself, as to time and kind of food, from a bill of fare which 
gives abundant range and variety. At twelve, luncheon. 
Dinner at two and four — the regular dinner at four. The 
bill of fare varies from day to day, and comprises the luxu- 
ries, variety, and profusion of a first-class city hotel. Sea-sick- 
ness usually leaves one with a fine appetite, and the crowded 
table does justice to an excellent cook. Most of the pas- 
sengers drink wine or other strong drink. The Maine-law 
is not yet made, and is not likely to be, the law of the main. 
The wine question is freely discussed. The result is 
always the same. They put the question to the mouth, 
and the result may be easily ascertained by the eyes and 
nose. 

Between meals there is whist in the dining saloon, but 
never on deck or in the cabin saloons, and it always ceases 
at eleven p. m. In the cabin saloon, in the evening, we 
had concerts, songs, music on the piano, recitations, conver- 
sations, and lounging, and reading. All about the decks 

2 



26 LIF& ON BOARD. 

and saloons, guide books, polyglot-phrase books, and yellow- 
covered literature, vie with each other in their efforts to kill 
time. Anything will call off the attention, a porpoise, a black 
fish, a whale, a stormy petrel, and most of all, the little land- 
birds, that venturesome curiosity, or a gale of wind, has sent 
hundreds of miles from shore, and on weary and drooping 
wing, seek our spars and rigging as a resting-place. Many 
such came on board and were taken with the hand. It is 
said that the alarm of their capture, added to their weariness 
and hunger, is always fatal to them, and that they very soon 
die if caught. 



aphr f([ir&. 



ENGLAND. 



LIVERPOOL is a second New- York in its active com 
mercial character. In its externals there is nothing 
to remind you that it is a foreign city. You are constantly 
reminded of Boston and Philadelphia. It resembles them 
more than it does New-York. The houses in the best 
streets are stuccoed and have finishings of the light gray 
sandstone, so common in England ; and there, as in all 
towns where bituminous coal is used as the usual fuel, the 
whole town has a smoky, dun and dark appearance. 

In their hotel arrangements, however, they have nothing in 
common with us ; no public sitting-room, no public parlor, no 
public or common table. A public eating-room, called the 
Coffee-room, is fitted up like a refectory, with little tables 
spread for one or two persons, and here the single gentle- 
men take their meals, each at such hour as he pleases. A 
gentleman with ladies must have his sitting as well as bed 
rooms, and his meals are served in his sitting-room, with 
such food and drink as he chooses to order, and at such 



28 LONDON TRAFALGAR SQUARE. 

times as suits his convenience. The hotels are much smaller 
than ours, have much less pretension in appearance, and 
the expenses to which the traveller is subjected are about 
twice as much as with us in hotels of similar grade. We 
^ were at the Adelphi Hotel, Ranelagh Place, in Liverpool, 
which I believe is quite the best in that city. It is a capital 
hotel on the European plan. I do not expect to find a 
better one in the British Islands, or on the Continent. 

"We spent but a day in Liverpool, being anxious to com- 
plete my business in London, if possible, so as to reach the 
South of Europe before the sickly heats of summer. 

We took the cars in the morning for London, the greater 
beauty of the country inducing us to take the route by 
Chester and Birmingham. We arrived in London in the 
afternoon. 

Although I must leave this city before I have despatched 
all its lions, indeed before having a fair hit at more than a 
few of the largest of them, and shall defer much that I 
have to say till I return here later in the season, when I 
hope to go through this great jungle more at my leisure, 
I must, nevertheless, say some things about London even 
now. 

When I say it is a wonderful place, I do not use the words 
in any commonplace sense. Every one knows that as a 
mere city, a great hive of men, a great settlement, London 
is wonderful. It stands alone. But in other senses and 
aspects — those in which you and I, and such as we, have 
been used to look at it — when I enter it and look at it and feel 
it, how it preaches of the past and prophesies of the fu- 
ture ! 

We went to Morley's well-known and excellent hotel, at 

the West End. It looks out upon Trafalgar square. 
That is a small square, about as large as Hudson square in 
New- York, only a speck on the map of the city. From my 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE. 29 

window I look upon Northumberland House on one side of 
the square — 

" Still proudly o'er its lofty gate, 
Their house's lion stands in state, 
As in his proud departed hours." 

We shall never again see such times as when Earl Percy 
went with hound and horn to the Chevy chase. Those 
hours are departed, but the pride of Northumberland — 
the power and the bravery of Percy — will never depart 
from the history and memory of England. 

" Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt 

The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt. 

The Douglas in red herring." 

But Percy and Northumberland do no such thing. Their 
names are indissolubly connected in all their relations with 
the pride, the glory, the bravery, the exclusiveness, the an- 
tiquity of the highest aristocracy ; and there, in the busy 
hum of London, their story is told from day to day, and 
from year to year. 

Another striking object, which gives the name to the 
square, is the monumental column to Nelson, reaching to the 
sky, and surmounted by a statue of the hero. Three of 
the four sides of the base of the column are sculptured with 
his deeds of glory, in the bronze of the guns he captured — 
the trophies and the heralds of his bravery. " England 
expects every man to do his duty," were the simple words 
under which he won his final triumph. From the Admiral 
down to the smallest ship-boy — the sailor between decks at 
his gun or in the " imminent deadly breach," with his board- 
ing pike — all thought only of their country and their duty. 
That battle and its motto, that monument and its story, 
cannot fail to teach lessons that sink deep into the heart, 
and do much to form the character of Englishmen. 

There is an humbler statue, that of George IV., in the 



30 GEORGE IV. CHAKLES I. 

same square. Cicero said he would prefer that posterity 
should wonder why a monument was not raised to his 
memory, rather than why one was. I never looked upon 
that monument to George IV., without wondering why 
it was reared to one of the most worthless and contempt- 
ible monarchs that ever reigned, certainly in England* 
But really the very littleness of commemorating him there 
helps to point the moral of the whole scene, so full of in- 
struction- and interest to republican eyes. There is great 
fitness in placing the man of deeds, no matter what may 
have been his parentage, above the mere king in the scale 
of grateful commemoration. 

And there, at Charing Cross, is the beautiful equestrian 
statue of Charles I. Blind loyalty, the divine right of 
kings, pure legitimacy, claim him as their martyr, and have 
sought to rescue his memory from the degradation of his 
end. But the English nation know, and most of all, every 
monarch that has succeeded him has known and felt, as he 
passed by that monument, that Charles I., was, indeed, a 
traitor to royalty and to England. He dispensed with the 
law. He was a faithless coward and an enemy of the people 
and their lights, and king as he was, legitimately and by 
divine right on the throne, his head justly rolled from the 
scaftbld like that of a common traitor ; and since that day 
no monarch of England would think of walking in his royal 
footsteps, without instinctively and convulsively putting his 
hand to his neck, to feel whether his head was safe on his 
shoulders. What an immense gain for liberty and right. 
There is no monument to Cromwell, but the time will come, 
though you and I may not live to see it, when the name of 
Oliver Cromwell will call up again the spirit of those brave 
old patriots of the commonwealth, who did so much for 
England and for freedom. 

A step down Whitehall from the statue of Charles I., is 



WESTMINSTER HALL. 31 

the place where he was beheaded, the scene of an immense 
step in the progress of England. At Runnymede the sturdy 
barons dictated the great charter to King John. With a 
wisdom not vouchsafed to Charles, John submitted, and the 
aristocracy, the first class of the people, triumphed over the 
throne; but the king preserved his life and his crown. At 
Whitehall, the people — the English people — dictated their 
wishes to the king and aristocracy. It was too humiliating 
to submit, and the king and the throne went down together, 
and the people were, henceforward, a power in the state — 
a permanent and a growing power. 

A little further on is Westminster Hall — literally and fig- 
uratively one of the grandest monumental halls in all 
English history. How many men of industry, of thought, 
of study, of action, have come, in Westminster Hall, to the 
reward of their labors, and the culmination of their honors, 
in titles, not which they inherited, but which they earned — 
which depended for lustre, not upon their ancestors but upon 
themselves — titles which did not descend to them, but to 
which they rose. What walk of usefulness, what path of 
glory, what round of laboi*, in Europe or America, is not 
to-day fenced and fortified by stronger protection because of 
Westn.inster Hall'? What body of men in the world more 
fully deserved or received the trustful confidence of suitors and 
clients, than the long line of great men who, in past ages 
and up to our day, on the bench and at the bar, have laid 
the solid foundation of English law and English justice in 
Westminster Hall ? What a short-sighted view it is, that 
awards to courts, and judges, and lawyers, only, the narrow 
and ephemeral usefulness of settling the few controversies that 
actually come before them — these are nothing in compari- 
son to th«t infinite usefulness which flows from the moral 
effect of that highest of all powers in a state, the right 
administration of justice. The triumph of the baron3 over 



32 WESTMINSTEE ABBEY 

King John was not a personal triumph alone, it incorporat- 
ed into the law, forever, the immortal words, " Nulli vende- 
mus nulli negabimus aid diffcrcmus rectum aut justitiam." "We 
will not sell, nor deny, nor delay right or justice to any one." 
Edward I., whose bloody nature and more than brutal 
savagery would consign him to an execrable immortality* 
by his wise laws and measures for the administration of 
justice, gained the name of the English Justinian, and 
induced posterity to overlook the record of his deeds of 
blood. " Cedant arma togae" — the courts are above the 
army — exclaimed the Roman orator. So it has always been, 
so it must always be in all well-constituted communities. 
And Westminster Abbey, across the street from Westmin- 
ster Hall cannot be described — outside so venerable and 
beautiful — inside so full of the truest glory of England. It 
is not the ostentatious and luxurious monuments of the 
heroes of war, which ornament the walls in nave and transept, 
nor yet the venerable graves in sculptured bronze and stone, 
in the chapels of royal honor, hoary with centuries that, to 
my mind, best mark the proper glory of this great receptacle 
of the distinguished dead. 

" Some men, with swords, may reap the field 
And plant fresh laurels when they kill ; 
Early or late 
They stoop to fate 1 

" Death lays his icy hands on kings 
Sceptre and crown 
Must tumble down." 

This would be so morally as well as physically if no one told 
their story in monuments more enduring than stone or brass. 
It is in that humbler group, less showy and more sacred, 
lying in the poets' corner, that more than all the rest inter- 
ested me. There are the poets, the historians, the dramatists, 
the essayists, in whose immortal pages the king, and the 



PARI1AMENT. 33 

soldier, and the lord, must live or have no life. The monu- 
ment of the king and the hero is more costly and triumph- 
ant than that of the writer, but these prouder monuments 
are made by kings and heroes, and not by writers, as the 
lion said of the picture of the lion conquered by the man. 

I listened to a debate in the House of Commons, in which 
Lord John Russell, Lytton Bulwer, D'Israeli, and other dis- 
tinguished lords and gentlemen, occupied the floor till one 
o'clock in the morning, on the malt tax, proposed to be 
largely increased by the present ministry. During that 
debate it was apparent there, as with us, that the people are 
the real sovereigns, the power to which her majesty and her 
majesty's ministers look as the ultimate power in the state. 
The reform bills, the Catholic emancipation bill, and other 
such modern measures of common justice and rational prog- 
ress, show that the examples of the past have not failed to 
instruct the present, and time alone can show whether there 
is yet to arise a monarch and an aristocracy, that shall make 
an obstinate and demented stand against church reform, 
educational reform, suffrage reform, or other popular de- 
mands, till the great ground swell upon which the throne, 
and the lords, and the bench of bishops, are sometimes 
rocked, even now, shall break into an angry sea, and sweep 
them all away as hereditary powers, and substitute for them 
an elective monarchy and senate, and a voluntary church. 

The two Houses of Parliament — I speak of the rooms in 
which they meet — are fine rooms for their respective purposes, 
the character, and constitution and idiosyncracy of the two 
bodies being considered. It is well known that the mem- 
bers sit on benches — short \ parallel benches on each side of 
the chamber — rising one above the other, from a broad pas- 
sage, in the centre of which, at the head of the room, is the 
speaker's chair, and the tables of the clerks, &c. The seats 
are well cushioned, and the whole room well fitted up. 



34 HOUSE OP COMMONS. 

There i? also a gallery which is sometimes, perhaps always, 
occupied by members. What struck me sis exceedingly sin- 
gular was the fact, that while the House consists of six 
hundred members, there are seats, taking gallery and all, for 
only about four hundred, or possibly, with great crowding, 
four hundred and fifty, it being supposed that about twa 
hundred will be absent. The administration party sit on 
the right of the Speaker, and the opposition on the left, the 
Ministry occupying the bench lowest and nearest to the 
chair. All sit with their hats on. Spectators are not allowed 
to wear their hats. They have no tables or desks, and seem 
very nonchalant and easy. The Speaker of the House 
does not wear his hat, but sits much at his ease, in his flow- 
ing wig and gown, converses with those who are near him, 
and joins in the laugh if anything amusing occurs. All the 
clerks of the House also wear wigs. The members are in 
their usual dress. 

The house opens punctually at the time appointed. At 
the strike of the clock, the Speaker leaves his room, preceded 
by the officer bearing the massive gilt mace, the insignia of 
the speaker's office. The train of the speaker's gown is 
borne by train-bearers, and he marches rapidly in, and 
is followed by the members who are there. The doors are 
closed, a psalm is read, and a short and appropriate service 
of prayers is performed, at which none but members are 
allowed to be present. That being finished, the House pro- 
ceeds to business, if there be forty members present, a rather 
small quorum, we should think, for a House of six hundred 
members. Petitions and other formal business are gone 
through with, and then comes on the more important busi- 
ness, which proceeds as with us. Members rise and speak, 
in their places with their hats off, many often rising at the 
same time, and the speaker assigning the floor to whomso- 
ever he sees first. 



DEBATE. 35 

Some one has said that England has been governed by- 
rival factions for the last hundred years. This is so, and 
the effects of it are constantly apparent. This arranging 
the members, according to party, on opposite sides of the 
chamber is one of them ; another, flowing naturally from 
this, is that after saying Mr. Speaker, the member takes no 
further notice of the presiding officer, but faces to the oppo- 
site side of the chamber and addresses his political adversa- 
ries seated there, and usually speaks to them in the second 
person. This would be considered, with us, as a great viola- 
tion of parliamentary etiquette. It certainly must gi*eatly 
tend to make legislation a matter of party triumph ; and 
without any such aids it tends rapidly enough in that direc- 
tion. I think the Senate of the United States has greatly 
degenerated since the two parties have arranged themselves 
on opposite sides of the chamber. That, however, may not 
be the cause of this degeneracy. There are other causes 
enough. 

The practice of cheering or discouraging a member on the 
floor, as he says anything acceptable or otherwise, is striking, 
and I should think tended greatly to promote the earnest- 
ness and ability of the debater. The cheers of approval are, 
'• Hear, hear, hear him ;" — a good-natured and disapproving 
surprise or ridicule, " Oh, oh !" of impatience, dissatisfaction 
and weariness, " Divide, divide" — answering to our call of 
question — that is, " Let us take the vote," which apparently 
on all really disputed questions is taken by a division of the 
House. The cheers are often animated, numerous, and dis- 
tinct, but not noisy or vociferous. The nearest approach to 
vociferation which I heard was, when Bulwer and DTsraeli 
rose to speak, when the cheers from their party, the opposition, 
were general and loud. Tn a full House and animated de- 
bate, the effect of the cheers was to me very amusing, 
from its novelty — the call for the question was especially so, 



36 division. 

seeming to be repeated about ten times in a distinct, clear 
monotone, not loud but rapid, " divide, divide, divide, 
divide, divide, divide, divide, divide," and running over 
one side of the House every few minutes. Finally, when 
no one else rises to speak, the Speaker rise?, and says, 
" Strangers will withdraw," when all withdraw except those' 
in the strangeis' gallery. The meaning of the order being, 
that all those who are within the bar of the House, shall 
withdraw. 

Three times in the course of the evening the ceremony of 
clearing the House for a division was perfox'med, but before 
the division commenced a member rose to speak, and the 
"strangers" were again admitted. Finally, the division 
came. The House was cleared, and a bell was rung through 
the magnificently vaulted corridors of the Parliament House, 
the library, the refreshment-room and the lobby, to give notice 
to the members who were out, to come within the bar to 
vote on a division ; and in the stragglers came, and the 
chamber was nlled. 

They do not call the ayes and noes as we do, nor take a 
question by rising, but the ayes arrange themselves on the 
Speaker's right and pass by him in procession, through a 
passage behind his chair, then wheel and pass clear round 
the outside of the chamber — where there is* a passage for the 
purpose — at the corner of which is one of the clerks with a 
division list of the members, on which he checks every one 
as he passes through a bar, admitting but one at a time 
They then pass into the chamber at the usual entrance in 
front of the Speaker, where they pass through another bar, 
and are checked by another clerk. In the meantime the 
noes have passed out of the usual entrance, in front of the 
Speaker, in similar procession, have been checked there by 
one of the clerks, have passed round to the left, outside of 
the chamber, and have been again checked there, and enter 



PARLIAMENT HOUSE. 37 

the chamber at the upper end on the left of the Speaker, 
as the ayes enter at the lower end, and all go to their seats. 
They thus never meet, and there is no confusion, but a waste 
of time which we could never endure. The lists are com- 
pared by the clerks, and the result declared. It takes quite 
half an hour to divide the House. 

These forms, I suppose, have been often described, but 
they were new to me ; and as an American gentleman, of 
great intelligence and some legislative experience, whom I 
met in London, and who had been often at the House, was 
ignorant of them, I give them to you. 

The Library room of the House is a large room, beauti- 
fully fitted up, but there are as yet but few books. No one 
can enter it except on the order of a member. As the 
House commences its sessions late in the afternoon, and sits 
in the night-time, the necessities of the members have de- 
manded a refreshment-room, which is let out to a restaura- 
teur, who supplies many of the members with their dinners 
and other refreshments at their own expense. It is in the 
Parliament House — a fine room, and finely fitted up — and 
is much resorted to by the members. It is for them exclu- 
sively. 

For many of the foregoing particulars, and for the civility 
of being shown through rooms otherwise inaccessible, we 
were indebted to the kindness of Sir James Anderson, 
one of the members from Glasgow, to whom I had a letter 
from our very excellent friend, Mr. Kellogg, late American 
Consul at Glasgow, whom I had the pleasure of becoming 
acquainted with at your house. Sir James was Mayor of 
Glasgow at the accession of her present Majesty, and in 
pursuance of an established usage, was knighted, as were all 
the mayors in the United Kingdom. It would give me 
great pleasure to have an opportunity to return, in A.merica, 
the kindness which was so acceptable to us in London. 



38 WESTMINSTER ABBET. 

Before seeing liim, I had presumed upon my having letters 
to another member, Mr. John McGregor, so far as to send 
up my card to liiin while the House was in session, and to 
his politeness I was indebted for the opportunity to hear the 
debate in the House, of which I have spoken. The debate 
was expected, and it was difficult to get orders of admission, • 
the members having exhausted their privilege. All these 
things in England are surrounded with form, and ceremony, 
and privilege. 

The Parliament Houses are quite fresh and new, having 
been rebuilt since the fire. The old Westminster Hall, for 
so many centuries known and occupied as the seat of justice 
for all England, was not destroyed, and that grand old 
Hall, from which you enter all the highest Courts, is the 
entrance to the Houses of Parliament. 

Westminster Abbey is directly across the street. In that 
venerable cathedral we attended church our first Sunday 
in England, and heard Archdeacon Bentinck, the Dean of 
Westminster Abbey, preach an excellent sermon to a 
crowded auditory. All the service is chanted, instead of 
being read in the usual tone. 

The Abbey, St. Paul's, the Tower, I shall not now de- 
scribe. 1 can only say that the Abbey quite equalled my 
expectations, the Tower did not, and St. Paul's fell far 
below them. They are all interesting, and no stranger 
should omit seeing them ; but these last have been so often 
described by glowing and friendly pens, that one can hardly 
be rapt into a similar admiration, and he is sure to be dis- 
appointed. I found others expressing the same opinion. 

The Tunnel under the Thames was very interesting. 

You descend through long flights of stairs to the floor of 

the tunnel and walk through it. There are persons con- 

" tinually passing. The charge is one penny, that is, about 

two cents, and they take some ten to twenty pounds a day. 



THE TUNNEL — BUSINESS STREETS. 89 

We had been going up and down the weary stairs of St. 
Paul's, and the Tower, and therefore determined after 
walking through the Tunnel to the other side of the Thames, 
to take a steamer up the river to near our residence. 
Having walked over and up the thousand and one steps on 
the other side, we found that there was no boat to come on 
that side, and no omnibus or cab, so we must even walk 
down and under and up again ; and although we could not 
perceive that they had been digging since we passed tlirough, 
we found it a much greater bore on our return than it was 
before. It is doubtless quite safe, but as the sides are wet 
in spots, it does not require any great effort of the imagin- 
ation to hear ''a dreadful sound of water in mine ears." 
We then took a Thames steamer — a small, low, black, open 
decked boat — and shot rapidiy through the numerous mag- 
nificent bridges that cross the Thames between the Tunnel 
and Charing Cross, thus taking an interesting view of the 
crowded river and its thronged and busy wharves. It is 
one of the great views of London. 

We had already driven repeatedly through the most 
crowded and beautiful streets, and the large and rural | a k°, 
and about the squares. Strand, and Cheapside, Fleet and 
Holborn, are great thoroughfares of trade and business, 
crowded with all sorts of vehicles and passers, and all their 
windows are crowded with shop-goods of the most attract- 
ive display, for miles. So Oxford street, Regent street, 
Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and the squares and parks, overpower 
one with their appearance of wealth and luxury in build- 
ings, in shops, equipages and style of all sorts. London is 
new every day — it is so large and of such infinite variety. 
It is so easy to go through the range of a thousand years, 
and with your own eyes to look in upon the monuments and 
the manners of thirty generations of Englishmen — England 
all the time in her glory, yet a portion only of a small 



40 THE WEATHER. 

island — that one is constantly reminded of the greatness and 
power and glory which has gone on increasing and increas- 
ing, till the sun never sits on her might. It is impossible 
not to be proud of such a parentage, and to say, if ever I 
must cease to be an American, let me be an Englishman. 
As I went through Westminster Abbey, in the Poet's Cor- 
ner, looking on the monument of Prior, I repeated a coup- 
let or two from Lloyd's lines — 

" The famed Mat Prior, it is said, 
Oft bit his nails and scratched his head — 
And changed a thought a hundred times 
Because he did not like the rhymes." 

And in the course of some conversation, it was said that I 
■>■ was an American. " Yes," said the guide, " and we often find 
the Americans know more about these men than the English 
themselves. — That comes, you know," said he, "because 
. you read so much more." I could not help the conscious 
feeling that, while, by the blessing of God, we have been 
permitted to set up for ourselves and open a career of na- 
tional glory entirely our own — so widely different from that 
of our fatherland — still we are entitled, in the strictest right, 
to participate in all the past glories of that most remark- 
able nation, whose great heart beats in London, and whose 
great national and social characteristics are there in daily 
manifestation, in their greatest intensity. 

"We have now been in England one week, and if half they 
say about the climate of London is true, we have been sin- 
gularly fortunate, for we have had uninterrupted fine 
weather, such as a New-Yorker might boast of in New- 
York, mild, clear, and dry — no fog, or mist, or rain, or 
drizzle. The smoky atmosphere of the great Babylon, from 
its hundreds of thousands of coal fires, is of course always 
here, and modifies the light and heat of the sun somewhat, 
but the climate of the last seven days has been delightful. 



Cfcaphr $0ttrtft. 



FRANCE. 

\ 1/E left London by railroad for Paris, by the way of 
V V Folkestone and Boulogne. At the former place we 
take a steamer and cross the channel, twenty-nine miles, to 
Boulogne-s«r-?«er. When we arrived at Folkestone, at 
mid-day, the tide was out, and the artificial harbor of that 
old English town was dry as a New- York street after a 
shower. The vessels, of all sorts, were lying quietly in the 
mud. While waiting for the tide to come — it rises some ten 
or twelve feet — we rambled about and came on board of 
our steamer again about four p. m. 

The cross seas and currents in the English Channel make 
it, you know, as uncomfortable a piece of navigation as can 
well be found. Passengers are always liable to sea-sickness, 
according to the worst pattern of that ugly disease. Of this 
we were forcibly reminded on returning on board, where, to 
our great amusement, we found the floors, as well as the 
benches and settees, of both cabins, covered with passen- 
gers, principally ladies, stretched at their length on their 



42 BOULOGNE — NAPOLEON in. 

backs or sides, their heads leaning on Iheir hands, or their 
carpet bags or baskets, and a common wash bowl by their 
heads, or in their laps, ready for the well-known contingency 
— if it can be called a contingency — of sea-sickness. Poor 
things! they lost all Iheir trouble — just our luck again — 
the sea was as smooth as a pond all the way. Not one of 
them was sea-sick, and they got up with looks of mortifica- 
tion and defeat as we neared the old port of Boulogne. On 
landing at Boulogne we were surprised to see that the bag- 
gage porters were women, who carried our heavy trunks, as 
well as lighter articles, from the steamer to the custom- 
house. 

Here we came under the government of his Imperial 
Majesty, Napoleon III., Emperor of the French, at the 
very place where — endeavoring, as the result has showed, to 
anticipate his destiny — he landed with a few followers, and 
galloped up the streets, scattering gold as they went like 
madmen, expecting a rising and a revolution like that when 
his uncle returned from Elba. A few stared, a few laughed, 
none joined him ; he was arrested, and imprisoned, and set 
down as too great a simpleton or madman to be shot or 
guillotined. I do not remember how long ago it was — not 
long — but he is now quietly and safely emperor of that 
great, learned, brave, and warlike nation, and has been at 
the head of it for six years. After his uncle, he is, doubtless, 
the ablest head that the French nation has had since the 
days of Louis XIV. 

The Queen of England reigns but does not govern 
Louis Napoleon reigns and governs also, both with the hand 
of a master, with tact as well as talent, and is popular be- 
cause he governs as well as reigns. The emperor and roy- 
alty suit, the French love of display. As a nation they like 
to be governed, if they can be governed well — have peace at 
home, respect abroad, and prosperity in all the departments of 



BOULOGNE TO PARIS. 43 

industry. These he secures to them — and why should they 
run after the few who sigh and agitate for the theoretical 
republic — while a practical one is impossible for the French — 
or for the ancient and legitimate monarchies of the Bour- 
bons, which most of the present generation of Frenchmen 
have been taught to despise. His destiny, thus far, is cer- 
tainly a most extraordinary one. When it will end, no one 
can predict. I do not see in it any elements of weakness. 

We object to the fusilades and slaughters of his prompt 
and energetic revolution, but revolutions are always bloody, 
although not always as short and complete as his. Of the 
numerous French revolutions, his was not the most bloody. 
Of all the great treasons to free government in France, his 
was the most pardonable. The question was forced upon 
him whether, in one week, he should be emperor, or prisoner, 
or fugitive — living or dead. He chose to triumph by rev- 
olution, which, in France, is a regular power in the state. 

The first-class seats in the railroad carriages, in both 
England and France, are much superior to ours, even when 
we make especial provision for comfort and sleep. Thus 
far we have found in all, convenient shelves, straps, &c, to 
hold the lighter articles that one desires to have at hand. 
The seats are luxuriously cushioned behind and on the sides 
to the top of the spacious carriage ; and one can recline the 
head and sleep as in a chair. Only six persons occupy one 
room or compartment, which is of abundant widlh. 

The roads are, thus far, much better than ours — always a 
double track, which, of course, prevents much of the liabil- 
ity to collision, and the cars run as easily as on a floor, free 
from jar and irregularity of motion. Indeed, it seems to be 
the perfection of rapid land carriage. They have always 
first, second, and third cLiss cars, differing greatly in price. 
They always stop half an hour or so for hasty meals. 

Our route from Boulogne to Paris was an agreeable one, 



44 pajus. 

as was that from London to Boulogne, through a fine open 
country, scattered with towns, villages, dwellings, and farms, 
and crops just beginning to look thrifty and interesting. 

There was little to remind us that we were not in America. 
The similarity of the landscape was striking, the grand dif- 
ference being the absence of hedges and fences. Lines of* 
trees, single and sometimes double, seem to be the only 
landmarks. The cultivation in France did not seem to equal 
that of England in neatness and care, nor the better order 
of good farming in the United States. 

In commencing this hasty run through the remarkable 
nations, I determined rather to avoid than to fill my mind 
with the infinite details which are crowded upon you by the 
guide-books, the cicerones, and the local lacqueys whose 
services you are compelled to accept at your places of less- 
hurried observation ; and, for the same reason, to pass over 
without particular notice many things that, if they alone 
could be seen, would be objects of much interest — to hurry 
on to the great centres of history, and at each of them to 
devote as much time as may be necessary to look at them 
with a little care. So, with an eye to the most advantage, 
and with the least risk to comfort and health, I shall press 
onward to my most southern points first, expecting to work 
my way back to cooler latitudes before the summer sun 
shall make the heavens brass, and the earth powder and 
dust. 

My stay, therefore, in Paris as in London, on my first 
visit, has been very brief, and my passage through France 
to the Mediterranean as rapid as practicable. An intelli- 
gent friend suggested the leaving Paris entirely alone, till 
the last, because being, as it were, the climax of excellence 
in sight-seeing, even a glance at it, in advance, would cause us 
to look with less interest upon other cities, and take from them 
the charm of their proper beauty and novelty — and would 



PARIS. 45 

also have the effect, on our return to Paris, to give it some- 
what the air of an old acquaintance. Perhaps he was right, 
but it was precisely these considerations which induced 
me to give both those wonderful capitals, in the first in- 
stance, but the brief visit of introduction which should show 
to me their genei'al manners and bearing, and more obvious 
characteristics, and to leave the " better acquaintance," the 
more appreciative knowledge, to the time when we shall 
have more familiarity with cities and countries of foreign 
aspect and habits. 

In Paris we learned something of hotel life there. We 
looked in upon the shops, we rode about in the voitures, 
we visited Noti'e Dame, and one or two other principal 
churches. We looked at the Palace of the Tuileries and 
its beautiful gardens, at the Champs Elysees, with its infi- 
nite amusements, and shady walks and seats — at the unnat- 
ural trim of ornamental trees into stiff angular forms — 
squares, circles, arches, pyramids — thus destroying the 
charm, without which nature is not nature. We saw the 
statues, and arches, and columns which ornament its public 
places, and perpetuate, in stone and bronze, the great men 
and great deeds of the nation. We saw its narrow lanes, 
and mounted to some of its loftiest garrets. We strolled in 
the gayest streets and promenaded the widest and most 
thronged Boulevards. We sat upon the sidewalk to see 
the passing crowds. We took our lunch at the stylish res- 
taurants, and saw all Paris in these gay Boulevards. The 
shops were open, with a few honorable exceptions, and the 
public conveyances running, and the usual occupations of 
life apparently going on — on Sunday as on other days. 
After these rapid glances, not careful enough to justify relia- 
ble descriptions, we took seats in the coupe of a diligence 
of the Messageries Imperiales for Marseilles, to proceed with- 
out stopping, except for two hurried meals a day, till, by rail 



46 THE DILIGENCE. 

and steam, and diligence, and horses, we shall have travers- 
ed la belle France in its longest direction, and seen la grand e 
nation in some of its best rural manifestations, and most 
hoary and curious antiquity. 

The lumbering French diligence, or stage coach, has been 
often described, and I shall attempt no other description; 
except to say that the body of the diligence consists of what, 
some twenty years ago, we should call a good-sized stage- 
coach. This constitutes the middle part of the vehicle. 
This is called the interior, and its seats are the second- 
class, and quite comfortable and entirely respectable. 
There is then still behind this, another apartment of nearly the 
same size, containing six seats, less comfortable and desirable, 
which is called the rotonde, and its seats are the third 
class. There is, also, in front of the interior, the first 
apartment of the carriage ; it contains only three seats, all 
looking forward, and the front and sides of this apartment are 
of glass, giving to the occupants a full opportunity to view the 
landscape. This is called the coupe, and its seats are the first 
class. It is fitted up in a very comfortable and easy style. 
There is, finally, the fourth class, which is the seat on the top, 
behind the driver. This is called the banquette, is comforta- 
bly fitted up and protected by a leather caleche-top, &c. 
The driver's scat and foot-board are quite clearly above the line 
of sight of the coupe. Then behind the fourth class, on the 
top, under a large leather covering, are all the baggage and 
merchandise, &c, on board. Practically it is a very well 
arranged, comfortable, capacious, and safe vehicle ; but, ap- 
parently, a very heavy, lumbering, awkward, and top-heavy 
concern. It is usually drawn by four horses, sometimes by 
three, and often by five or six horses, three abreast. We 
were quite doubtful at first, but soon found it to be a con- 
veyance — in the coupe — of singular comfort, safely and agree- 
ableness. 



PAltfS TO MARSEILLES. 47 

We took the diligence at the Rue Notre Dame des Yic- 
toires, and were rolled through Paris, the whole length of 
the grand succession of Boulevards to the railroad depot. 
There we were driven under a grent windlass, and the body 
of the diligence was lifted up — as a blacksmith swings up an 
ox to shoe him — and the running part removed. The body 
is then swung on to the running part of a railroad car and 
properly fastened ; and thus our carriage, with ourselves and 
the baggage, by this hasty change, becomes a railroad car- 
riage filled and loaded, the horses and the running part be- 
ing left behind. We were then, by steam, whirled rapidly 
through to Chalons-sur-saone, two hundred and thirty-nine 
miles. We had the whole coupe to ourselves, and being 
about ten feet behind the next preceding carriage, we saw, 
through the glazed front and sides of our little snuggery, the 
whole landscape spread before us, as distinctly as a clear and 
quiet atmosphere, and a mild and unclouded sun, could ren- 
der it. Indeed, the weather all the way to Marseilles, and 
while here, has been such as to call for our gratitude for that 
kindness which has so favored us, on this excursion, in every 
hour of every day. 

At Chalons we were taken by another windlass from the 
railroad, and placed upon diligence wheels, six horses placed 
before us, three abreast, harnessed in the strange manner of 
the country, and we shuffled, and rattled, and rolled, and 
scrambled along, each of our six horses occasionally endeavor- 
ing to find a sort of rest, by running through the whole 
gamut of his paces — walking, racking, trotting, pacing, gal- 
loping, running ; but no pair in the same pace at once. It 
had an odd, belter skelter, scrub-race, dangerous sort of 
look to us, but it was quite safe, rapid, and pleasant. We 
might have taken a dirty little steamer from Chalons to 
Lyons, down the Saone, and another from Lyons to Avig- 
non, down the Rhone — the passage giving fine views of the 



48 THE LANDSCAPE. 

river sides, and external looks at the old towns that are 
scattered along ; but I preferred the diligence that carried, 
us along the highways — through the vineyards, and gar- 
dens, and groves — in close proximity to the old ruins and 
castles, and through the narrow, crooked, and rock paved 
streets of towns — all showing the look, the habits, the cos- 
tumes, the crops, and the cultivation which, probably, have 
been unchanged for a thousand years and more. At Avig- 
non, once the seat of the popes, we were again transferred 
to a car on the rail track, and rapidly carried to Marseilles, 
the great French port on the Mediterranean. 

The whole trip was one. to us, of constantly changing 
novelty and interest, the details of which, of course cannot, 
without weariness to you, be put into a letter. From Paris 
to Fontainebleau was the beautiful cultivation that sur- 
rounds a large city with gardens, which minister to the 
various tastes of the people — then the Bois de Fontaine- 
bleau, where they resort usually for duels, and where is the 
the palace of Fontainebleau, where Napoleon I. took leave 
of the officers of the Old Guard, &c, on departing for 
Elba. The sides of the railroads at each end of the route, 
are everywhere covered with flower? of various beauty, but 
usually of the deepest and clearest dyes — the wild red 
poppy with its single-leafed flower — yellow, red, and white 
daisies — whole fields of the landscape were covered with 
butter cups. There were no fences, no hedges, no visible 
landmarks of any kind but rows of poplars and sometimes 
other trees, trimmed to a little tuft at the top, that the 
shadow of their more umbrageous branches may not impair 
the fertility of the soil about them. 

This mode of trimming trees, in both England and France, 
is very general, and produces a singular and rather unpleas- 
ant effect. The fields, as far as the eye can reach, are 
divided into narrow strips, varying in width from ten to 



THE LANDSCAPE. 49 

fifty feet or more, and these strips, in inexplicable variety 
and alternation, exhibit all sorts of crops and all stages of 
cultivation. One strip freshly ploughed — the next a fine 
headed growth of wheat, or oats, or rye — then some new 
crop just harrowed — the next, mowers swinging their 
scythes, and so on, and so on, as we roll on over the rail 
or the road. This cultivation extends to the top of the 
hills, in the middle distance, while the mountains in the far 
distance, perhaps, show the snow clad-summits and the 
rugged outlines of Alpine peaks. And occasionally, here 
and there, on the hills, some gray old ruin nods from a cliff, 
and seems about to leap into the valley below — and anon 
you see, on the distant hill which you are rapidly approach- 
ing, a rocky barren of large extent, breaking in upon the 
garden which your eye has so long rested upon. It is 
almost refreshing to look upon the rugged ledges and 
moss-grown sides, and cool shadows of such a desert, so 
hoary and deserted ; but before you have had time to get 
cool by thinking on its trickling fissures and the " shadow 
of a great rock in a weary land," lo ! a second look, and 
the thing turns out to be an old French town, gray with 
centuries, old as the times of Julius Caesar, and it had 
perhaps its Latin name given to it by the conquering 
Roman who found it an old fortified town, and took it by 
storm with catapult and battering-ram. And now you rush 
by it in the car, or trundling through its narrow streets in a 
diligence, you wonder at its crooked lanes, its lofty and 
almost windowless walls — its low and sunken doors which, 
thrown open, reveal its dark unfurnished rooms, with earth 
or stone floors, that seem as comfortless and uncivilized as 
the hut of a savage, and only a little less filthy than the 
streets, that serve all offensive purposes. 

In the fields we saw few men, fewer cattle and sheep and 
horses. We wondered where the men were, but we saw 

3 



50 PEASANT WOMEN. 

many women in the streets, on the road, and in the fields. 
Every human female — from mewling and puking infancy 
to decrepit age — wears a cap, and nothing else, on the head. 
Women carry most things on their heads, and they carry 
everything, and perform all the most laborious labors of 
rural life. In civilized Boulogne, they carried the heavies* 
trunks from the ship to the custom-house, and again to the 
carriage. We saw them working in the fields and carrying 
home the harvest — breaking stones to macadamize the high- 
way — and, along the highway, gathering, with their hands 
alone, into their aprons, the fresh dropped dung for manure. 
The leader, the driver, the rider, the constant companion 
and co-worker of the universal donkey, is woman — and of 
course she shows the effect of sueh a position in life. She 
is, however, always better and neater dressed than man, and 
seems not unhappy or discontented with her lot. She 
seems to be as happy as a galley slave in his song, or a 
negro slave in her dance. But her premature wrinkles and 
gray hair, and her ultimate decrepitude, show that her 
more delicate constitution was not made for such a task. 

Next after her is the universal donkey. He is certainly 
a great institution in Europe. We have all of us seen, from 
time to time, a respectable and wise-looking ass, or the 
lighter and more graceful mule, but that grotesque little 
animal — the universal European donkey — has been a per- 
petual novelty to me. He is but little larger than a goat, 
and is about as shaggy. His ears are about as long as his 
legs, and he usually carries them nearly horizontally, and 
his endurance, patience, meekness, and strength, seem to be 
without limit. 

A donkey, costing in London or on the Continent, from 
ten to fifteen dollars, and a cart about as much more, is a 
complete outfit for a carman — and without the cart, on the 
Continent, the donkey himself, with a sort of a pack-saddle, 



DONKEYS. 51 

is competent to anything. They cover him up with sacks 
many times his bulk — they put a tolerabla load of wood on 
each side of him, with a strap across the saddle — they cover 
him all up with fagots and bundles of hay, and straw, and 
baskets of enormous size, filled with stone or iron, or prod- 
uce. Often you will see the little animal, trotting along, 
with six or seven ten-or-fifteen-gallon kegs of beer for a 
load, three kegs on each side and one on his back, so that 
his load reaches on each side to within about a foot of the 
ground. You see a load of hay coming toward you, ap- 
parently moving by its own will, and not till it is quite 
near are you able to discover, near the ground, signs of a 
donkey beneath it, looking for all the world like a mouse 
under a bundle of oakum. And the peasant girl, going to 
market, puts her two large baskets on her little gray donkey — 
one on each side, resting on straps across the saddle — clothes 
herself in the picturesque dress of her class, and seats her- 
self on the saddle, using one basket for her foot-rest, and, 
with her knitting in her hands, trots cheerily on, her broad- 
brimmed cone-crowned hat — for out of France they wear 
hats — and her party-colored boddice, trembling under the 
pit-a-pat pace of her progress, and the ribbons flutter- 
ing in the gentle breeze that blows her hair about her 
tawny neck. 

And the teams for drawing carts and wagons on the great 
highways, for the transportation of merchandise or produce, 
were a great novelty to us, although doubtless they have 
come down unchanged from the greatest antiquity. You 
will see three or four donkeys tandem, or two or three 
abreast, or a» horse, a cow, and a donkey tandem, or oftener 
three abreast, and another donkey for a leader — and, some- 
times, a homogeneous train of six donkeys, three abreast, 
or five, two abreast, with a leader. Their harness is the 
oddest of all contrivances, and with donkey himself and the 



52 PARIS TO MARSEILLES. 

cart, defies all characteristic description. Between the ears 
is an ornamental little steeple, with feathers, or rosettes of 
rags, and a bell or two. Then, about the shoulders, is a 
hame collar, stuffed with straw, about six inches thick, ter- 
minating at the top in a leather-eovered cone, about fifteen 
inches high, and about six inches in diameter at the base. 
About this is a necklace of small bells. Then comes up the 
wooden hame — fastened at the base of this cone where, 
with us, it terminates — but in middle France it stops 
not there, but on both sides of the cone starts off again 
at an angle of about forty-five degrees with the axis of the 
cone, and, in a regular curve, branches off eighteen or twenty 
inches, like a pair of long, slender horns, and on the ends 
are rings, through which the reins run before going to the 
bits. Then the cart is loaded, all it will bear, above the 
axletree and below, between the wheels, to near the ground. 
Each particular animal has abont as many heads and horns 
as the beast in the Apocalypse, and the whole thing to- 
gether might be worshipped by one idolatrously inclined, as 
the only thing which has no likeness to anything in the 
heavens above, or earth beneath, or the waters under the 
earth In the larger and more civilized towns, the lower 
classes, the common people, find their long-eared servant 
very useful, under his little saddle or before his little 
cart, to trot nimbly along on the rural drives and excur- 
sions, and little airings, which the numerous holidays make 
available. 

I spoke of the fields and the cultivated landscape of 
France, as it passed under my eye for the first hundred 
miles. Soon the vine made its appearance, anfl at first the 
vineyards only crept up the hillsides with a warm and sunny 
exposure. By-and-bye they spread over the plains, and 
made one of the long strips of alternating crops, and at last 
they became the principal crop, the vines being planted 



THE RAILROAD. 53 

some ten to twenty feet apart in rows, and between the 
rows other crops, that would neither shade the grapes nor be 
shaded by them, nor impede their vintage. And as soon 
as we approached the shores of the Mediterranean, the olive 
and the almond tree began to appear. 

You must not imagine that the beautifully cultivated 
fields were the only landscape we looked upon. We saw 
often the beautiful grazing landscape, with its clumps of 
trees and winding streams, and meadows opened out among 
the hills, that reminded us constantly of the more beautiful 
landscapes of Vermont and Massachusetts, but the absence of 
cattle, and sheep, and horses — except here and there, perhaps, 
a shepherd with his few sheep, or the cow-pen, with half a 
dozen cows — always struck us with surprise. The cattle 
upon the hills, and the sheep in the pastures, were not there 
as we see them at home. So, too, the general character of 
the landscape and the country was by no means homogene- 
ous. We passed through large regions of almost desolation 
and wilderness. Briers and thorns covered the face of it, 
whortleberries and blackberries were apparently its stingy 
crops, and ferns, and brakes, and wild thistles, and other 
profitless weeds, were the ornaments of valleys between the 
barren knolls. 

The railroad was remarkably well made. All its con- 
structions were of great strength and beauty; and, for the 
last one third of the route from Paris to Chalons, and from 
Avignon to Marseilles, there is a constant succession of tri- 
umphs of engineering, and the masterly skill of the mechanic. 
It there runs through sections of the rudest, sharpest and 
deepest hills, valleys, ravines, and gorges, of the most wild, 
accidental and picturesqe character. Of course, deep cuts, and 
bridges, and viaducts, and tunnels, succeed each other in the 
most rapid and irregular succession. We passed through two 
tunnels of several miles each in length. The painful sus- 



54 MARSEILLES. 

pense of ten minutes in such deep solitudes and awful cells, 
being unbroken except in one instance, when midway of the 
tunnel we met another train, and the rattling of the multi- 
tudinous echoes, the blazing of the torches, and the half illu- 
minated wreaths of smoke, as the trains rushed by each 
other in the long subterraneous cavern, gave an air of 
the most startling sublimity. 

It was from such a tunnel that we came out into the sub- 
urbs of Marseilles. This city dates its foundation some six 
hundred years before Christ, and has always been a com- 
mercial city. Tradition says that some half a dozen years 
after the death of Christ, the risen Lazarus with his two 
sisters came to Marseilles as the pioneers of the new religion. 
The preaching of Lazarus soon brought him to a second 
death, and with his martyrdom the progress of the religion 
of Christ was almost entirely arrested ; and it was not till 
two hundred and fifty years later, that a Roman officer, 
with two of his soldiei-s, having embraced the new faith, also 
suffered martyrdom, and, by their triumphant confidence in 
the Savior, aroused the sympathies of the people, and intro- 
duced Christianity among them. At about the same time, 
it spread rapidly through Greece and Rome. 

The blood of the original Greek race that settled the city, 
it is said, may be still traced, so that the population is of 
two classes, as is the town itself of two different parts, the 
old and the new. The old race is dark-eyed and a little 
tawney, brave, industrious and economical, with a temper 
that " carries anger as the flint bears fire, that shows a hasty 
spark and straight is cold again," but in its moments of ex- 
altation, is dangerous. The new race is mercurial, active, 
volatile and sympathetic, easily aroused and easily led, in- 
dustrious and enterprising. 

The old town is dark, narrow, dirty, and labyrinthine. 
The new is modern, and spacious, and beautiful. The com- 



MARSEILLES. 55 

pletion of the road to Paris, now near at hand, must give 
an impulse to this old commercial town, which will soon 
make it, in all its principal portions, feel the invigorating 
influence of modern commerce ; and if the Emperor be really 
about to build there a royal palace, as has been suggested in 
official quarters, Marseilles, after the varied misfortunes of 
the last fifty years, will enter upon a career of the greatest 
prosperity, and will rapidly become one of the greatest and 
most beautiful cities of the world. The old city was built 
round a little bay or bight — pear-shaped, and of bold shore 
and good water — constituting a harbor of the greatest safety, 
from which the city spread around, as it grew, through its 
long ages of Mediterranean commerce. 

This little harbor — little, compared with a larger and 
outer harbor — is now crowded with vessels from all parts of 
the world, packed as closely together as it is possible to 
place them ; and in its coffee-houses, and along its wharves, 
the shipmasters and sailors from England and America mix 
with those from Greece, and Egypt, and Africa. By-and- 
bye the new town of Marseilles will stretch farther and 
farther inland, her old harbor will become a mere dock, and 
that spacious outer harbor, which is now protected by the 
hills on her sides and the rocky islets that form a natural 
breakwater, will be one of the largest and most thronged, as 
well as one of the safest in the world. 

We drove to the Napoleon Tower, which terminates the 
Cours Bonaparte, one of the best streets. It overlooks the 
city and the harbor, and is surmounted by a covered reser- 
voir for the water that from the neighboring hills supplies 
the city. We took a turn through the principal streets and 
the grand Prado — a street of immense length and about two 
hundred and fifty feet wide — with two large carriage ways 
alternating with two broad walks, all planted wilh trees, 
and now on its sides crowded with beautiful country resi- 



56 SOUTH OF FRANCE. 

dences. It is the beginning of one of the most magnificent 
thoroughfares in the world. 

It is now a necessary of life for a Marsellais to have a 
country house, which is his only " home." It is one of the 
inevitables of modern progress, that the present two hundred 
thousand people of the city shall soon swell to a million.* 
The gray rocks that shut her in from the sea, will be forever 
unchanged, but when the Prado, with numerous intersecting 
similar avenues, shall stretch miles into the country, then 
the graceful, and solid, and fanciful architecture of the rus 
in urbe, will present one of its most enchanting manifesta- 
tions, in this modern improvement of the old Phocian city 
of Marseilles. 

On our arrival at Marseilles, we found that the steamboat 
which we had hurried to meet on her appointed clay, had left 
the day before, so that after a day or two for rest and look- 
ing about, we took the diligence — which we had found so 
pleasant thus far — for Genoa, by the way of Nice, through 
that "south of France," that " north shore of the Mediter- 
ranean," to whose unknown climate, physicians, who have 
never been there, have heretofore consigned so many patients 
to the desolate death of the stranger in a strange land. It is 
a strip of country which, indeed, looks out upon a southern 
sun and a usually tranquil sea, but it lies at the base of 
an Alpine region, from which the wind comes down with 
an almost polar chill. The balmy and sweet breath of a 
genial spring morning, that has invited the invalid to stroll 
in the fields — or the burning heat of the summer sun, which 
have forced him to seek the deep shades of the groves of the 
olive, the fig, and the lemon, are, without notice, and with 
an irregular and accidental suddenness of change, succeeded 
by the frosty breath of a gale that has swept over eternal 
snows. These all make this climate so fatal to consumptives, 
that while we all hear of many who seek health in the south 



MARSEILLES TO NICE. 57 

of France, we rarely hear of one who has returned to meet 
the friends whose hopes and tears were mingled with his, when 
he left. This, I believe, has come to be generally acknowl- 
edged, and the little cities and towns that have owed much 
of their prosperity and beauty to the many foreign residents 
whose money and taste have given to the old-fashioned town 
a modern look and style, are now losing that prosperity, to 
some extent. Physicians, of course, more rarely advise 
their patients to go to the south of France for health. 

The drive from Marseilles to Nice is one of great beauty. 
A violent rain of an hour, at starting, had swept along tbe 
coast, laid the dust, and washed the face of natm-e. Im- 
mense orchards of olive-trees, and fig-trees, and almond- 
trees, cover the plains and the hills — the cereal plants and 
the vines are spread side by side in long strips, like the 
beds and alleys of a garden of boundless exent — and long 
bines of mulberry-trees stretch along the wayside and the 
headlands that divide the farms. 

The choicest flowers of our conservatories, the rarest and 
rankest cactuses grow wild, and here and there, as you ap- 
proach a village that strangers have decked with a profu- 
sion of plants, whose breath is sweet as their hues are 
beautiful, the whole air is loaded with perfume for miles. 
The shower had refreshed them all, and the fields seemed to 
smile with a newly-discovered joy, and gardens to wave a 
happy welcome to us, as our wheels bore us toward them. 

The clay was one of those festival holidays, which abound 
in Roman Catholic countries, and we had the advantage of 
seeing the people in their holiday dresses. Each disti-ict 
seems to have its characteristic costume for the peasants, 
which is, sometimes, as pretty as it looks in a picture. 
More often, however, while you recognize the original of a 
pretty picture, you are compelled to pronounce the reality 
ungraceful and uninteresting. 

3* 



58 MARSEILLES TO NICE. 

The town of Cannes, one of the last towns in France as 
yon approach the Italian frontier, is beautiful in a high de- 
gree. It has been occupied by foreigners, and about it are 
modern buildings of great taste and freshness, in the archi- 
tecture and grounds — a mixture of the Turkish and the 
Christian styles of ornament. Here the cross and there the 
Sultan's crescent moons give a novelty and interest, which the 
severer form of ancient taste would lack. The whole finish 
and air — light, brilliant and beautiful — of the new parts of this 
and some other towns, are exceedingly refreshing, and inter- 
esting — interchanging the frightful and filthy towns that are 
scattered along the coast, whose dirty and crooked streets run 
at the base of high and poverty-stricken houses of stone and 
stucco of the coarsest kind — the streets so narrow that as 
the diligence moves along, it is only with great skill that 
the driver avoids hitting the walls on both sides, while the 
inhabitants rush into the niches and doorways, and stand 
there trembling, making themselves as small and thin as 
possible to avoid being crushed by the passing wheels. 

Just as we reached the frontier we saw, by the roadside, 
a marble column, engraved, "Souvenir du Mars, 1815. 
De I'isle d'Elbe, ici debarqua Napoleon." " In memory of 
March, 1815. Here Napoleon landed from the island of 
Elba" — and on a small tavern sign, " Chez moi, reposa Na- 
poleon — venez boire ici, et celebrez son nom." " Napoleon 
reposed in my house — come in and drink to the honor of his 
name." Thus indelibly the first Napoleon wrote his name 
wherever he went. 



ITALY NICE TO GENOA. 

IN a few minutes after we saw the records of the great 
Corsican, we passed the frontier and were in Italy — Nice 
being the frontier town of the Duchy of Piedmont. It is 
one of the towns which have been so much visited by inva- 
lids and their families — one of the watering place of the 
north shore of the Mediterranean. The old town is like the 
other old towns which are scattered through France and 
Italy — narrow, dirty, dingy, and disagreeable — but the new 
part is open, wide, airy, and beautiful. The court-yards 
and fields are covered with flowers, and sweet with every 
variety of pleasant perfume. 

The streams of water — as we passed along through all this 
region — are but rivulets that one could step over. Little 
streamlets wind along their sunny way through wide pebbly 
channels that are spanned by large bridges sometimes, of 
many arches. These streams are fed from the Ligurian and 
Maritime Alps, from the bases of which they issue, and a 
comparatively light rain swells them to wide and boisterous 



60 ITALY-— NICE. 

rivers, which again, after a few clays, leave their channels 
dry and dusty, except a small rill. The effect is strange to the 
eye — wide rivers thus apparently dried up. This little rill of 
fresh water, however, near the towns, is often lined on both 
sides with the washerwomen of the vicinity, kneeling at the 
brink, resting their little wash-boards on stones, and busy 
at their humble trade — while all the dry stony bed of the 
stream is covered, in little patches, with the washed linen 
spread to bleach in the sun. We saw, I should think, some- 
times a hundred women and girls thus at work together. 
With their climate they need no fire in their houses, and, 
of course, use no hot water for washing, while the run of the 
stream changes the water so often, that their work is per- 
formed with comparatively little labor. 

The sidewalks of Nice present an appearance which is 
quite pretty, that is, in the old part of the town. They are 
paved with the pebbles from the beach of the Mediterranean, 
of two colors, white and bluish gray, set in Mosaic style, 
in various combinations of the regular geometrical figures. 
But while the effect is agreeable enough to the eye, it cannot 
be so pleasant to the feet of those who wear light slippers or 
go barefoot. However, here, as in France, the barefooted 
peasantry wear wooden shoes, as Sir Terence O'Shaugh- 
nessy, or some other tauriferous member of the Irish Parlia- 
ment, once said. 

Nice is celebrated, in a small way, for the neatness with 
which the various kinds of woods produced there are wrought 
into fancy articles. It has its theatre and opera, and public 
w r alks, and its garrison of soldiers, and has, on some hours 
of the day and evening, much appearance of life and activity. 
We here saw a drunken man for the first time since we left 
New- York. Rags, filth, and beggars, abound. There are 
drives and views, and all that, in the neighborhood, which 
we did not go to see, but went joyfully on our way to Genoa, 



THE CORNICE ROAD. 61 

along that remarkable route — forming a sort of cornice to 
the highlands of the shore — and long known as the cornice 
road. 

That road, soon after leaving Nice, by a devious and 
winding course, among the little spurs of the Ligurian Alps, 
finds its romantic way to their tops, and then goes from 
cliff to cliff, round this gorge, and over that chasm, over via- 
ducts and bridges, and along precipices of uncalculated 
depths — all those stony mountains being terraced up with 
stone walls, and covered with the vine and the olive up to 
the line of vegetation. Here and there a mountain village, 
solitary and lonely, is planted among their fastnesses, and now 
and then the torrent that had, for ages, worn the rock of its 
ragged and precipitous bed, has left, at the bottom, its period- 
ical deposit till there has grown an oasis of the freshest 
green that the eye can rest upon. The road itself was 
smooth and beautiful, and its course is often round two 
sides of a triangle, in a complete zig-zag, so as to preserve a 
tolerably level track. On our right and close to us was the 
Mediterranean, with its towers of the middle ages scattered 
all along the shore — built there as little fortresses against 
the African corsairs, and now in ruins — and its here 
and there white sails on its calm blue water. The sea, 
and the bay, and the sail, and the tower, and the chasm, and 
the cliff, and the terrace of the vine and the olive, and 
the rugged and Alpine summits, and the green fields at their 
bases, were shut in and shut out, now disclosed and now 
concealed, now in one form and combination of beauty, and 
wildness, and sublimity, and now in another, till we were 
almost dizzy with the mere intoxication of beauty and novelty. 

Here, among these mountains, is the little monarchy of 
Monaco, the smallest monarchy in the world, containing 
about six thousand subjects. Monaco lies at our feet as we 
go along the hills, and, at one little settlement by the way, 



62 MONACO— TROPHY A AUGUST!. 

there was so much show of authority as to take down our 
trunks from the diligence and pretend to be about to search 
them custom-housieally — but this was only that the right 
might not be lost by non-user. Nothing was actually 
done, and no money demanded. The Prince of Monaco has 
his palace at Monaco. Painting, and gilding, and throne- 
room, and guard-room, and ante-chamber, are there, but 
decayed and neglected. His majesty spends most of his 
time at Paris, and we did not delay our journey to look in 
upon his shabby gentility. 

Near this is one of those relics which so forcibly show 
those characteristics of the old Eomans which enabled them 
to extend their empire over almost impossibilities. The 
Tropha^a Augusti — an immense tower now in ruins, but 
formerly of great extent, surmounted by a statue of Augus- 
tus, and covered with trophies — was built by that emperor 
to commemorate his ultimate triumph over the tribes of the 
Ligurian Alps. What perseverance, and strength, and dis- 
cipline, must have been united in the Roman soldier to have 
enabled him, with his heavy armor, to follow, and over- 
take and subdue — on these angular, broken, and precipitous 
cliffs — the wild tribes, that for near one hundred years success- 
fully defied the Koman power. Well may Augustus have 
been proud to commemorate their final subjection by hia 
arms. 

After passing along these highlands, we wind a beautiful 
way down to the seashore, and continue along its plane to 
Genoa. I shall not attempt to describe the various old 
towns through which we passed on this interesting journey, 
of two, three, four, five, ten, and twenty thousand people. 
Old, gray, dirty, and comfortless — with narrow streets, and 
filthy lanes — the houses often communicate at the top, or 
two or three stories up, across the streets, as though it was 
intended that the population might pass from house to house 



PEASANT GIRLS, 



68 



without descending to the street, when defence or escape 
might make it necessary. We saw in the fields the most 
admirable husbandry with the rudest and most primitive 
agricultural instruments. The plants and fruits of the 
tropics by the wayside, spreading out over the plains, and 
reaching from terrace to terrace up the hillsides. Enor- 
mous cactuses — wild among the rocks — the oriental palm 
tree, and the American aloe mix, here and there, in a land- 
scape covered with vast fields of lemon, orange, almond, 
olive and fig trees. 

It is a singular characteristic of the better and more 
recent class of houses, that they are painted often in gay and 
bright colors — of course on walls of stucco, for there are no 
wooden houses thus far on the Continent. You are pleased 
as you seem to see that the people begin to know what airi- 
ness and comfort are. The house in its several stories is pierc- 
ed with windows, which have sashes and blinds, and a man is 
smoking comfortably by one window, and a harmless, neces- 
sary cat is sitting in another. You can almost hear her purr. 
But when you are near enough to see the cheat, you find 
that it is all paint, and that the house has but a window or 
two in reality, and doubtless within is as confined, dark, and 
comfortless, as the dungeon-like hut that made no pretension 
to decency. The churches are sometimes painted, from spire 
to foundation stone, in the brightest and various colors. 

The peasant-girls are a great improvement upon what we 
saw in France. Here, when dressed up, they are quite ro- 
mantic in their look. The broad, straw hat, is set flat on 
the top of the head, and the crown is a flat cone, of about 
three inches in height, the base of which, by a graceful 
curve, sweeps out into the brim, and the ribbons give it a 
liveliness which is quite picturesque. The girls themselves 
are more feminine, and you see less of them in the fields, 
while the rakish way in which the conductor of the dili- 



64 MAIL STAGE- 

gence wears his hat, and the dashing nod and heroic air 
with which the postillion cracks his whip, as he rumbles in 
or out of a village, or passes a company of peasant-grrls, 
and the certainty that every one. of those girls will so tos3 
or turn her head as always to give to every man in the dili- 
gence — and especially to the conductor and postillion — a 
sight of her face — all show that you are again among 
humans, who have some regard to appearances, and desire 
especially to be looked upon with favor. 

I should have said before that the diligence has always 
two masters, the conductor who goes the whole route, and 
directs the postillion when to stop and when to go — it is 
always with the conductor that the passengers communi- 
cate — and the postillion, who drives a team out and back, 
one post as it is called, six to ten miles, and spends the 
rest of the time in taking care of his horses and lounging. 
Of course he is a knowing man on his route, and an agree- 
able one and good company for the girls ; and while the 
laboring man gets one franc (nineteen cents) a day, he 
gets two francs, and two cents a passenger each way, 
usually equal, all told, to four franes a day. He is a 
nabob. 

Our diligence was a courier, that is to say, a mail-stage, 
and having taken a seat for a large portion of the day with 
the conductor on the top of the coach, I observed his mail 
arrangements, for he is the travelling postmaster. His 
packages of letters for each place were nicely tied up and 
addressed, and when he came to the post-office, he threw them 
on the ground, and took from the end of a reed the exchange 
mail which was reached up to him, and the diligence did not 
stop except to change horses. His mail-bag was a small 
canvass-bag, without any lock, and his packages of letters, as 
well as the blanks, paper, and twine, which he distributed as 
he went along, in the same manner as the mails, lay about 



GENOA. 65 

the banquette in a very careless and unsuspicious confusion, 
although there were two of us passengers in the banquette 
with. him, and at every change of horses he left his place 
till we were ready to start again. He was a native of 
Savona, one of the nicest villages through which we passed, 
and was evidently a respectable young man, and a devout 
one. The little shrines and images of the Virgin are set in 
niches in the rocks, in the houses, in the walls, and else- 
where in the villages, and on the highways — whenever 
he observed one as we passed, he raised his hat with re- 
ligious respect, which the postillion and the passengers and 
the peasants did not do. 

I sa\v in one of the small towns where we changed horses, 
a sign, in large pretentious letters, " Caffe Democratico," — 
Democratic Coffee-house. So I stopped to refresh myself, 
after a thirsty ride, with a drink in honor of Italian democ- 
racy. I took a bottle of what they call gaseous lemonade, 
but I found it a poor drink enough, and it took a good 
while to get its unpalatable, sour taste out of the mouth. 
I fancy the democracy of the place was no better. 

Some eight or ten miles before reaching Genoa, a large 
sweep of the shore inward shows you that city, on a hill- 
side, in the distance. All along the rest of the way, her 
lofty light-houses, the long line of her mole, the forts which 
crown the heights all about her, and the palaces and villas 
and convents that are scattered upon the hills that sur- 
round her, grow nearer and nearer, and more and more 
distinct, as we now and then got new sights of them from 
the winding of the road. The entrance to the city of 
palaces — Genoa, the superb — showed the bustle, the activity, 
and the thrift which belong to a city that has commerce and 
industry, ships, shipping, and railroads. Its railroad depot, 
which is on the quay of the harbor, and the harbor crowded 
with vessels, were refreshing to me again, after my long ride 



66 COLUMBUS. 

through such a district of primitive simplicity and ancient 
and modern ruins, as lay between it and Marseilles. 

Tradition makes Cogoletto, a small town through which 
we passed a few miles before reaching Genoa, the birth- 
place of Columbus, and there is an inscription which marks 
the house of his reputed birth. It may be true and it may 
be false, for in this land of tradition and superstition, it is 
as easy to fabricate a tradition as an inscription, and credu- 
lity is ready to believe that it is as old as Adam. The 
house of his father was in the suburbs of Genoa, as is 
shown by the deed. He, himself, says he was born in Ge- 
noa, an expression which may well mean the territory and 
not the city of Genoa. There is, thei-efore, some color for 
the tradition, and it is not worth while to dig deeper to 
find doubts. He was a Ligurian, and nothing could be 
more likely to sharpen his curiosity, and suggest a life of 
adventure, than to look out from these rocky highlands, up- 
on the open Mediterranean, washing the fields at its base, 
and covered with the little, but daring and enterprising cor- 
sairs of the Levant, the Grecian Archipelago, and the Afri- 
can coast. 

How time sets things right ! Brought home in chains, 
robbed in his lifetime of his honors and his profits, and the 
name of another given to his discoveries, time has written 
his name ''"with iron and lead in the rock forever." His 
jealous and triumphant enemies, as well as his royal pa- 
trons and enterprising followers in the path of discovery, are 
remembered, but when we call them up from the land of 
shadows, there is always in the midst of them and before 
them, the great Genoese with a glory about him, in the 
light of which they shine with a pale ray. So it will be 
forever. He went on, when every other would have given 
up in despair. He gave a New World to the kingdoms of 
Castile and Aragon. But Castile and Aragon, and all the 



WOMEN. 67 

progeny of their descendant commonwealths, are dwindling 
and fading away, and a race, nearer akin to the old Ligu- 
rian — " the world-seeking Genoese " — is, from year to year, 
devoting the New World to the great commonwealth of free- 
dom and mutuality. So mote it be. 

Genoa, run down in her commerce, and racked by con- 
tributions, and a siege almost unequalled in war, and its 
famine, of which 15,000 died, is again rising into more im- 
portance, under the government of liberal princes. The 
rise of rents has been enormous, as has been that of the 
other expenses of living — sure indications of increasing 
prosperity. The people seem active, industrious, and hap- 
py. The harbor is crowded with vessels. The shops are 
rich and attractive, and all indicates a prosperous city. 
The little navy of Sardinia, in pi-oportion to its size, is un- 
surpassed in credit and efficiency, and sons of high families 
are glad to enter the service. 

Some of the local customs are quite peculiar. Thus, the 
right to act as a porter, to carry goods, is a monopoly 
which belongs to a sort of privileged corporation. Those 
who carry goods from place to place, are called Bergamas- 
chi, from Bergamo, whence they originally came, and the 
calling is hereditary in their families. They may, however, 
sell their privileges, and often do so, to their countrymen, 
at a great price. They send their wives to the proper neighbor- 
hood to be confined, that the children may inherit the call- 
ing of a porter, a bearer of burdens — which to look upon in 
Genoa, Ave should think the last trade that one would desire 
his children to be born to. 

The women of Genoa, those whom we saw in the streets, 
were neat and good looking in their persons, and quite sty- 
lish and peculiar in their dress, which is always graceful, 
even if the means of the wearer cannot make it rich. A 
short waist, snug boddice, reasonably short skirts, no hat or 



68 PALACES STREETS. 

cap, but the well-arranged hair is covered with a white, 
long shawl, varying, with circumstances, from plain muslin 
to the finest lace, which falls from the forehead down over 
the shoulders and bust behind, and the ends coming over 
within the arms forward, and reaching to near the hem of 
the skirt. They seem all to have that beautiful accomplish- 
ment of walking modestly and gracefully, yet confidently, 
and with ease and dignity. 

Genoa is remarkable for its manufactories of gold and 
silver filagree ornaments, in which three guineas are made 
to do the work of not only five but five times five. It fur- 
nishes an interesting illustration of the divisibility of mat- 
ter. While the quantity of matter, however, decreases geo- 
metrically, the price decreases only arithmetically. The 
work is exceedingly pretty. 

The city rises ■ from the circular shores of a little bay, 
which, by the artificial additions of wall and rock, is made a 
very safe harbor. The compact city is close upon the water, 
reaching, in many places, far up a steep ascent. The 
streets are exceedingly narrow, five, six, eight, and ten feet 
wide. You may shake hands across many of the streets. 
The buildings are very high — six or seven high stories 
— the effect of which is to make the city cool and 
pleasant, when, with wide streets, the heat would be intol- 
erable. Such streets are inacessible to carriages of any con- 
struction known to us. The little universal donkey, with 
his narrow wagon or cart, goes up and down them, however, 
with safety and despatch, and so does the privileged porter. 
Their newer and more magnificent streets are, perhaps, 
thirty and forty feet wide. 

On these streets are built the palaces, which abound in 
the city and have given it the name of the city of palaces, 
but which lose much of their architectural beauty and effect 
by being thus shut in on all sides. The finest and most lux- 



CHURCHES. 69 

urious of these palaces, occupied by the highest nobility, are 
large, the rooms numerous, spacious, and lofty, and fur- 
nished in a style of luxury, not exceeding that of our rich 
citizen?, except carpets — the palaces have no carpets. Pic- 
tures by the best masters, Van Dycks, and Titians, and 
Raffaelles, Caraccis, Rembrandts, and Muriilos, and others 
of great merit but of less fame, ornament the walls of the 
principal rooms of the palaces which we visited. No mod- 
ern paintings. 

The king being, at the time, absent at Turin, we were 
also permitted to visit the royal palace and its apartments. 
The rooms were lined throughout with the richest of satin 
hangings and embroidered tapestries. The floors were of 
the costliest woods, now simply tessellated, and now inlaid 
in patterns of beautiful Mosaic and polished till they were 
slippery as ice. The furniture was of the most tasteful and 
expensive patterns, material, and finish. 

In all Catholic countries the churches furnish a princi- 
pal class of attractions to the attention of travellers. On 
them the faithful lavish their wealth, that architecture, 
painting, and sculpture, may there exhibit their highest pow- 
ers in doing honor to the object of religious adoration. In 
Genoa, therefore — so long one of the wealthiest cities of 
Italy — there are several churches well worthy the notice of 
the traveller. The Cathedral Church of St. Lorenzo, about 
seven hundred years old, is a pile alike venerable and beau- 
tiful. It is built of alternate blocks of white and black 
marble — and within, its architecture and decorations, its 
paintings, statues, frescoes, and sarcophagi, were interest- 
ing, alike for their antiquity and for their absolute beauty. 
Into the richest portion of the church, the Chapel of St. 
John the Baptist, no female is permitted to enter except one 
day in the week. 

But the richest and most beautiful church in the city, is 



70 THE ANNOTCIATA. 

the Church of the Annunciation, a church of the Francis- 
cans, said, by our guide, to be unsurpassed in all Italy for 
the richness of its finish and decorations. Within some 
three or four years past, its gilding has been restored at the 
expense of a wealthy family of the high nobility. It is a 
very large church, and its immense ceiling — which is finish- 
ed in a most beautiful and rich style of architectural orna- 
ment — is entirely gilded. It looks like a vast mass of solid 
gold wrought in the best style of art. The altar pieces are 
paintings of the greatest merit, in the finest style of preser- 
vation, while its dome and arches are covered with frescoes 
as bright and clear in every line, and color, and shadow, as 
though they were the work of yesterday — they are several 
hundred years old. I was, therefore, struck with the truth 
of a remark of a critical artist — whose name I do not now 
recall — who says, in substance, that he took an oil painting of 
fine color and preservation and placed it beside a fresco, and 
then retreated till the oil painting was a dim, and faded, and 
undistinguished mass, but the fresco almost seemed to gain 
new beauty, and its colors were as fresh as the hues of 
heaven. So I found it there, in comparing the fine oil 
altar piece with the beautiful fresco of the dome above it. 

As we were looking about, an old woman came near us. 
She was the picture of age — she seemed like one that Death 
had either overlooked or forgotten. We had seen so many 
like her as we travelled on — such a vast proportion of old 
women — that I ventured the question, said to be always an 
impertinent one to a woman — I asked her age. She was in 
humble life and took no exception, and said she was sixty- 
eight. I inferred from that single instance, the truth of 
what I before said, that the great number of old women 
must be caused by premature decrepitude brought on by 
toils and exposures, to which the slender constitution of the 
woman is constantly subjected, in these countries. 



LEGHORN PISA 71 

We took passage in a steamer from Genoa to Naples, to stop 
during the day time at Leghorn, then to proceed by night 
to Civita Vecchia, the port of Rome, and spend a day there, 
and go to Naples the next night — intending, after seeing 
Naples, to come back to Rome by land. We had a pleas- 
ant run down to Leghorn — the great port of Tuscany — 
in Italian, Livorno, in French, Livourne — where we found 
ourselves in the morning among a crowd of shipping. We 
went from the ship's side in a small boat, and were rowed far 
up into the town to the hotel, San Marco, a capital hotel, kept 
by John Smith — and, after an excellent breakfast and a run 
through the city to the great Synagogue of the Jews, which 
is said to be one of the finest in Europe, to the Cathedral, 
through the public square and principal streets — none of 
which present anything worthy of special remark — we took 
the cars for Pisa, twelve miles inland. Half an hour hurried 
us through the level plains, dotted with trees of small growth, 
especially the pine, shaped like an apple-tree with a trunk 
twice as long, while long rows of smaller trees about twenty 
feet apart — on which the vines are festooned from tree to 
tree along the roadside and across the fields — gave a very 
pleasing effect to the landscape. 

Pisa is a small town on the Arno, usually a quiet stream — 
but there had been a rain the preceding night, and it was now 
a swollen, turbid torrent. The city presents no object of at- 
traction, except the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Leaning 
Tower, and the Campo Santo, which constitute a group of 
buildings only six or eight rods apart, unequalled, not only 
as a group, but in detail. The Cathedral, built some eight 
hundred years ago, is beautiful and grand, in its external pro- 
portions and finish, beyond anything we have yet seen — and 
within its walls the eye wanders from Mosaic to fresco, from 
high altar to chapel, from vaulted aisles, and panelled ceilings, 
and tesselated floors, to columns, and capitals, and friezes. 



72 LEANING TOWER OF PISA. 

and cornices, and sculptures, in marble, and wood, and gold, 
and silver, and bronze, and ornaments of drapery, and pre- 
cious stones, till the mind is weary with the variety and 
beauty of the objects — which still do not seem to be crowded 
nor to produce an injurious or ostentatious effect, but 
rather an harmonious, soothing, and religious one. 

The Leaning Tower, so well known, is a bell tower for 
the Cathedral — campanilla, in Italian. Many churches are so 
constructed that there is no convenient or available place 
for bells, then a campanilla is erected a few rods distanl. 
The form and architecture of the campanilla may thus be of 
its own kind, and appropriate to its own purpose alone. 
This tower is slightly conical, fifty feet in diameter at the 
base, and one hundred and seventy-six feet high, and con- 
tains nothing but the staircase, by which you ascend to the 
top, and the bells which are found there. From the top 
there is a wide view across the plain, in all directions. The 
interior of the Tower has no ornamental finish — simple 
plain walls. The exterior consists of eight stories of fine arch- 
itectural finish and effeet. It was built about seven hundred 
years ago, and one side has settled so that it overhangs 
about thirteen feet. Some parts of the Cathedral have also 
settled considerably. Some persons have supposed that the 
Tower was intentionally built in a leaning position. But it 
is quite clear that it was not so, and that it sank before it 
was finished. The lower courses and stories are inclined at 
the same angle as the tower — but in the upper ones an 
attempt is made to correct the inclination — the columns and 
stories on the one side are longer than on the other, so that, I 
believe, the topis quite level, and the tower has the appear- 
ance of being a little curved. Engravings and alabaster 
copies of it in miniature are common everywhere, but they 
fail to give an adequate idea of the tower itself and the sin- 
gular effect of the leaning. 



BAPTISTEEY CAMPO SANTO. 78 

The Baptistery is a beautiful little temple, in the form of 
a simple dome, terminating in a point. It is some forty or 
fifty feet in diameter at the base, and upon it are lavished 
the highest efforts of art — to make it a gem, in its way — 
within and without. In the centre of the floor is a bap- 
tismal font, or basin, and the sole purpose of the building 
was to furnish a place for performing the rite of baptism. 

The Campo Santo is a burial-place. In the time of the 
Crusades, when Palestine and the Holy Sepulchre Avere the 
object of so much zeal and devotion, and so many thousands 
perilled their lives to wrest the possession of that sacred 
spot from the hands of the infidel, it was a precious conso- 
lation to the brave and pious crusader that if 

" He died, the sword in his mailed hand, 
On the holy soil of the blessed land," 

his body should lie in the sacred bosom of that holy land, 
and moulder away with kindred earth to that in which the 
Savior had been buried. But the faithful who stayed at 
home were denied the hope of such Christian burial, till one 
of the prelates of those days — who had gone to Palestine 
with one of the crusaders — finding that they could not suc- 
ceed in placing the holy places in the hands of the Church, 
determined to do something for Chiistendom in furnishing 
a burial-place, not in Jerusalem, but in a little Palestine, in 
Pisa. He accordingly caused to be transported from the 
Holy Land fifty -six ship -loads of the earth of the conse- 
crated soil, and deposited it near the cathedral, in a proper 
enclosure, for the purpose of burial. And this is the Campo 
Santo — the holy field — and in it have been buried countless 
hundreds of those whom the Church thought worthy of that 
distinguished favor. It has, however, now no appearance 
of a grave-yard, and I believe it is no longer used for the 
purpose of interment. There is built upon it a spacious 

4 



74 LEGHORN TO CIVITA VECCHIA. 

building — the walls of which are covered with frescoes, many 
of them now faded and ruined — in which the history of the 
Creation, the history of Redemption, of Moses and Job, 
and so on, are spread out upon the long walls — and the 
rooms are also filled with sarcophagi, statues, and other 
sculptures and inscriptions, which, from time to time, during 
the last few hundred years, have been discovered in the 
ruins of the heathen world that occupied Italy before the 
Christian religion had taken the place of idolatry. 

These four striking objects, thus placed in one group — 
that magnificent cathedral — that lofty tower for the bells — 
that temple to baptize in, and that Campo Santo for the 
banquet of the worms, with the forms and ceremonies which 
they all are intended to subserve — what an illustration they 
are of the millions and millions of wealth that have been 
lavished to maintain a system of ceremonial religion — to my 
imperfect eye as unlike the religion of the Apostles, as this 
latter was unlike the worship of Diana of the Ephesians. 

The early evening found us again in our steamer on the 
Mediterranean, and bound to Civita Vecchia. About six 
o'clock the wind began to freshen, and before half an hour 
it blew a gale which tossed our boat like an egg-shell on as 
saucy a sea as I have ever looked upon. All were made 
very sick, not a soul went to the dinner-table with me 
except the old captain, who tried to eat a little soup. I 
observed it was twice dashed from him by the sea, as chairs 
and dishes tumbled down to the leeward. Big drops of 
sweat stood on his brow, and he ordered the dinner re- 
moved. He was himself evidently sick and a little alarm- 
ed at the look of the weather, as the wind was blowing 
almost directly on shore. We were both very sick. I 
threw myself on a bed in my clothes and closed my eyes — 
the best remedy I find for sea-sickness — but I soon fell 
asleep and luckily did not wake till morning, when I was 



CIVITA VECCHIA. 75 

informed that the vessel had not met such a gale during the 
whole of last winter, and all mankind on board had been 
fearfully sick. "When I came on deck, we were in sight of 
Civita Vecchia, which we reached about six o'clock. 

Here, as in all the Italian ports, Ave are not allowed to 
land till the police officers on shore have time to rub their 
eyes over our passports, and furnish little certificates that 
we are permitted to land. This took till eight o'clock, and 
by this time we had learned, by accident, that his majesty of 
Naples had ordered our vessel to be quarantined ten days, 
because of rumored cholera at Marseilles, her point of 
departure. This would detain us in the lazaretto at 
Naples, ten days before landing, which would make a sad 
break of my arrangements, so I determined to sacrifice my 
passage money, which had been paid to Naples. I accord- 
ingly went ashore at Civita Vecchia, to go to Rome before 
going to Naples. So after the passports were examined by 
the police — the baggage examined by the custom-house offi- 
cers, and duly tied up with strings and sealed with a lead 
seal — and every man that looked at us being paid a small 
sum — at ten a. m., we took our seats in a Roman diligence 
for Rome. 



STATES OF THE CHURCH ROME. 

TTTE had been used to French diligences with decent 
VV postillions and conductor?, and were, therefore, 
amused as well as shocked at the worn, poverty-stricken 
look of the diligence and all its appurtenances, and the per- 
fect brigand appearance of the postillions and conductor. 
"We trotted on slowly, with every prospect of being detained 
on the road, till evening, and were consoled by stories of re- 
cent robberies of the diligence on that route, from one of our 
passengers, who — while he said there was no danger, and 
that he, especially, was not afraid — was plainly trembling 
with dread of robbers as night approached. He carefully 
put all rings and trinkets out of sight. We changed horses 
at inns which looked as though they were dens of thieves, 
and we were persecuted by scores of little beggars that started 
out, every now and then, and ran by the side of the dili- 
gence, in sight of the window, for miles with imploring 
hands and a whining, moaning, undertone, just reaching our 
ears. 

It is the practice, when travelling, besides paying your 



THE ROAD TO ROME. 77 

fare, to give to every conductor, postillion, and driver, a small 
sum, called in French pour boire, and in German trinkgeld, 
drink-money, and in Italian buono memo, gratification. The 
conductor preferred that we should allow him to pay them 
what they had a right to expect, and that at the end of the 
route we should make him snch allowance as we might 
think reasonable — an arrangement by which of course he 
was a gainer, for, doubtless, our payment to him was much 
larger than he actually paid them. They seemed to think 
so, too, for at every change of postillions — they change about 
once in ten miles — we were beset with lackadaisical and be- 
seeching politeness for the buono mano, while their brigand 
looks suggested constantly, to some of the passengers, the ex- 
pediency of paying, lest the fellows should cut across lots 
and join a band to rob us. However, we paid but once or 
twice, and crept slowly on, and while the evening sun was 
still bright on the dome of St. Peter's, entered Rome. Close 
by the court of that great temple we were stopped an hour 
to get our passports into the hands of the police, and get our 
certificates of regularity, right to reside, &c. — for on entering 
a steamer on the Mediterranean, or any of the towns, your 
passport is taken from you and kept till you are ready to 
get it visaed for your departure. We were then trundled 
along into the heart of Rome, to the office of the diligence, 
and thence we provided new means of transportation to our 
hotels. 

The road from Civita Vecchia to Rome runs through a 
flat country, tolerably well cultivated, and as you approach 
Rome, quite well. I observed often along the road — 
say fifty persons together in a field, hoeing corn or planting 
potatoes — a long line sweeping across an immense field, all 
at the same work. The effect was strange, but there might 
be advantage in having all the seed planted at once, or the 
whole field put in the same condition at the same time, so 



78 LABORERS IN THE MARKET-PLACE. 

that the crop should be uniform. I afterward passed through 
the market-place of Rome on Sunday, and such a din of 
hammering and ringing of iron and steel, as I heard, made 
me suppose at first that it was a great tin, copper, and sheet 
iron factory — but crowds of persons were standing around, 
idle, eating their plain food — and the hammering, I per- 
ceived, came from many men seated each by a small anvil, 
and with a small hammer, bringing to a thin edge a scythe. 
On inquiry I found that in that manner the laborers get 
their scythes brought to an edge, which is afterward man- 
ageable with a mower's whetstone. The scythe is short 
and nearly straight, not more than thirty inches long, and is 
about six inches wide at the heel, from which it tapers to a 
point. The snath is also straight and rather longer than 
with us, and the purpose which we answer by the bold and 
graceful curve, is here answered by a peculiar arrangement 
of the handles above and below. The look of the thing is 
much more awkward and ungainly, but judging from the 
men at work, it would seem to be better than ours. Mow- 
ing with us is a hard, back-breaking labor, but here the 
mower stands almost erect, and seems to walk over the field 
more at ease, with the command of his muscles and his joints 
at their full advantage. If I could have found a good op- 
portunity I should have liked to try the instrument myself, 
and compare its working with memories now more than 
thirty years old. 

The idlers in the market-place were men, waiting to be 
hired. The farmers of the country around come here to 
hire their laborers, and thus it is that they have these large 
numbers in their fields at once. They keep few or no per- 
manent laborers, but when a piece of work is to be done, 
go and hire men enough to do it at once. They do it, and 
then wait for another job. It brought forcibly to my mind 
the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, where the master 



ROMAN OXEN BUFFALOES. 79 

went out at different hours to the market-place to hire labor- 
ers for his vineyard. The practice so familiar then to the 
people of Jerusalem, still exists in its primitive form at 
Rome. 

The ox is here in constant use, and the Eoman ox is a 
beauty — large and well proportioned, always of a mouse 
color, shaded into a dark line on his back, and with a lighter 
belly, and with a deep ruffle or frill extending from his 
lower lip to his brisket— and such a pair of horns — white, 
with dark bases and tips — starting from his brow and wind- 
ing in a most perfect uniformity, with a graceful and really 
majestic spread to sometimes three feet apart at the points ! 
Such fine looking animals — I never tired of looking at 
them — such teams, such droves, so all alike, and so clean — 
they seemed like a noble race of animals, whose blood for 
generations had never been allowed to mingle with that of 
any common or plebeian breed — and such a contrast with 
the tatterdemalion, rascallion, banditti beggars that drive 
them, in slouched hats, old cloaks, ragged shirts and jackets, 
trowsers with one leg of sheep skin, wool out, and the other 
of goat skin, hair out, and all other things to match ! They 
drive their teams during the day when travelling, and at 
night turn them out by the wayside, sup on the bread and 
wine of their own stores, and then wrap themselves in their 
cloaks and go to sleep on the grass. 

The buffalo is also a beast of burden here, and we often 
meet large teams of those black, ungainly, downcast, and 
sullen-looking animals, hauling immense loads along the 
great thoroughfares, even on the Appian way, reminding 
one, of those captured barbarians that marched in chains, in 
the train of their captors, in the days of ancient Rome. 

Flocks of goats are in the fields, and large flocks of sheep, 
with shepherd and dog. At night the sheep are herded in 
a compact body, in a pen made for the occasion, by running 



80 PAPAL POWER. 

a cord round the tops of small stakes driven at each corner. 
This forms a visible geographical line, which the sheep and 
the dogs alike treat as a fence. If a sheep steps outside of 
it, which he rarely does, the dog immediately drives him 
back. 

We first saw St. Peter's about ten miles before reaching 
Rome — its dome just reaching above the horizon. It was 
at that time by no means a very striking object, nor did it 
become so till we were quite near it. When we stopped 
near the court of St. Peter's, we found the sentinels were 
French soldiers, very youthful in their appearance, and even 
more so in their conduct, for they were romping and playing 
like children. We were thus early reminded that the papal 
temporal power has passed away as a real power, and that 
those writers upon the prophecies, who have so confidently 
looked for and predicted the downfall of the Romish Church 
during the first half of this century, and have been chagrined 
to find that Church more prosperous and aggressive now 
than ever, if they could have confined their scarlet-lady-of- 
Babylon predictions, to that temporal power whose sacri- 
legious union with the Church has so long disgraced and 
abused her, might easily have found the fulfilment of their 
predictions, in the captivity of Pius VII., under the first 
N;ipoleon — the slavish submission of himself and his suc- 
cessors to external domination — the Roman Republic of six 
years ago — and the constant occupation of the city by French 
soldiers to the present time. The temporal power of Rome 
has passed away, and will never return. In substance, in 
spirit and in truth, it is gone. A shadowy, useless form, is 
indeed kept up, but there is no semblance even of that tem- 
poral power, before which the nations trembled in bygone 
ages. The great initials, S. P. Q. R. — the Senate and 
People of Rome — stand in great capitals on the public 
buildings and palaces of the nobility of the present day — 



PRIESTS AND MONKS. 81 

as they did in the days of ancient republican Rome — and 
they are about as good evidence that the old Roman Repub- 
lic still exists, as is the present papal power evidence of the 
existence of that sacerdotal temporal government which, 
with the sword and the flames of purgatory in one hand, 
and worldly honors and the keys of Heaven in the other, 
strode over the rights of nations and the consciences of men, 
to universal dominion. 

When morning came, and we commenced seeing Rome, 
the most striking thing that we saw — although we had trav- 
elled one thousand miles through Catholic countries, and had 
seen priests and monks everywhere in abundance — was the 
immense numbers of them that thronged the streets. The 
priests are dressed in black gowns, that come to the ground, 
broad-brimmed black hats, turned up three-cornerwise — 
not cocked hats. They are well dressed, gentlemanly 
looking persons — and they are seen at all hours, when not 
at their religious exercises, singly and in squads, walking in 
the streets and squares. So the various orders of monks, 
in the dresses of their respective orders — some bareheaded 
and some not — some barefooted and some not— some dirty 
and some clean — some beggarly and ragged — some well clad 
and gentlemanlike — are also wandering through the streets, 
and living upon charity or otherwise. 

As we were taking our breakfast the morning after our 
arrival, our host of the hotel procured for us a valet of 
great experience, and modest, good manners, Mariano 
Zacharia, whose book of testimonials — afterward shown to 
me that I might add my own — contained the strong certifi- 
cates of many New-Yorkers of distinction, whom he had 
served, and of whom he always spoke with delight and 
affection. I secured his constant services during my stay, 
and he immediately gave me the private information, known 

to few except the parties and their friends, that a princely 

4* 



82 NOBLE WEDDING. 

wedding was to take place that afternoon, of a happy pair 
from two of the noblest families of Rome — the Duke of 
Sora and a Borghesian Princess — the ceremony to be per- 
formed by Cardinal Altieri, in the chapel of the Borghesian 
family, in the celebrated Church of Santa Maria Maggiore — 
one of tire Seven Basilicas of Rome, and one of the noblest 
churches in the city — and that, if we desired, he would get 
a carriage and take us there. We were not slow to era- 
brace the opportunity for so rare a sight. Mariano had 
selected an open barouche, that we might utilize our time 
as we rode. He mounted the box with the coachman, and 
keeping his ears open for us, and his eyes, his hand and 
tongue ready to point us to objects of interest, we turned 
from the Lion's mouth — the street of our hotel — into the 
Corso — the Broadway of Rome — and after a drive in that 
famous street, we passed the ruins of the Forum of Trajan, 
and an exceedingly fine and interesting ruin — approaching 
the church through the via Santa Maria Maggiore. We rested 
in the open square of the church, on the summit of the 
Esquiline Hill, at the base of that most beautiful of columns, 
the column of the Virgin. There we waited, while the few 
stray carriages like our own, came dropping in, and until 
the nuptial cortege — the stately equipages of nobles, spir- 
itual and temporal, cardinals and princes and high-bred 
ladies — made their appearance in princely but modest attire. 

I have no eye for dresses, etc., and finding that M has 

written home to the ladies, giving the details intelligibly to 
them, I extract her words : " Soon the royal equipage 
drove up, glittering in the rays of the sun, blazoned in scar- 
let and gold. Afterward came the cortege of the cardinal, 
who was to perform the ceremony. His servants were 
three footmen, in gorgeous livery — cocked hats, trimmed 
with broad yellow, red and green galoon, the outer edge of 
the hats being trimmed with a wide fringe of the same 



THE BRIDAL PAIR. 83 

colors — red velvet vest?, trimmed with gold lace — red velvet 
breeches and high top-boots. The cardinal was clad in 
scarlet silk robes, with a scarlet cap on his head. The 
bride appeared on the arm of her father, clad in a dress of 
Brussels lace, over a white glace silk, and a jacket made of 
the same silk, trimmed with the same lace. A wreath of 
orange-buds confined the scarf of the same lace — not an 
ornament of any kind, nor an attendant, save a few mem- 
bers of the family, who were simply clad in bonnets and 
plain silk dresses, with white silk and muslin mantillas. 
Other equipages were very imposing, varying a little in colors, 
but quite similar to the cardinal's." By this time there 
was quite a crowd, and we did not think it wise to dis- 
mount and mingle with it, as it would be impossible to make 
our way into the church, strangers as Ave were — so we glanced 
at the Eternal city from this point, and scanned the motley 
crowd of Romans of all sorts, from ragged chikh-en, hoary 
beggars, and mendicant monks, up to the titled nobility of 
church and state. No one can fail to be struck with the 
democratic equality of an Italian crowd in and about a 
church. After a while, Mariano stepped quietly from the 
carriage to ask of an acquaintance — one of the servitors of 
a cardinal — if the newly married pair would, as is some- 
times done, proceed to St. Peter's. He learned that they 
would do so, and we, apparently alone of all the spectators' 
carriages, then proceeded quietly to that wonder of the 
world. It was our first visit there, of course, and we had 
hardly time to glance through its wonderful arches before 
we saw the happy couple enter the church, unattended, at a 
side door, walk to a near chapel, and jointly perform a 
short act of devotion — then, arm in arm, walk quietly and 
respectfully to the statue of St. Peter and kiss its foot — then 
return a few steps, and kneel side by side by the massive 
railing that surrounds the vault where rest the remains of 



84 KCrtlAN NEWSPAPERS. 

St. Petei', before the high altar and at the base of that most 
magnificent of all baldachins, whose splendors are disclosed 
and heightened by the light of one hundred and twelve 
lamps, that blaze there night and day. There, their heads 
bowed, they worshipped a few moments, then rose, and de- 
parted at the door by which they entered. Nothing could 
be more simple, becoming, and religions, than their whole 
demeanor. They had no train — no ostentation — no com- 
panions even — not one — their eyes did not wander and their 
thoughts did not seem to be diverted from the apparently 
solemn invocation of the Divine blessing upon that linked 
life on which they had just entered. Besides ourselves, 
there were almost no persons — I do not remember any — in 
that vast temple, except that interesting pair and a pertina- 
cious small crowd of beggars that dogged their steps from 
altar to altar, in expectation apparently that they miyht 
give an alms worthy of their wealth and position. Beggars 
are so sacred in Rome that no police seems to dare to re- 
buke them, and their impudence and persistence are exceed- 
ingly annoying to travellers. Of course they must throng 
about the churches of a religion that makes mendicity 
almost one of the cardinal virtues. 

Nothing strikes a North American in Rome, as more in 
contrast with our country, than the newspapers — or rather 
the no-newspapers. The principal newspaper — indeed the only 
one which I saw — published in Rome, was the Roman Journal, 
the official gazette. It is published daily except on holi- 
days — about four times a week. It is a small folio sheet, 
about twelve by sixteen inches — has no editorial mattei*, 
almost no advertisements, and is entirely made up of clip- 
pings from the foreign newspapers — not, however, including 
ours. I never saw in it any mention whatever of our 
country. Our republican, Protestant country appears to be 
entirely ignored in the papal city. And I do not remember 



CHURCHES. 85 

hearing the question asked, "What is the news?" They 
see and hear so little that no one expects news. And 
strange as it may seem to an American, this way of the 
whole community minding their own business — at least, not 
minding their neighbor's business, nor troubling themselves 
much about the rest of the world, is very well for a change. 
It has its good side, and its agreeable side, too. It almost 
makes one ask himself, is it, after all, quite certain that such 
an infinite gabble of newspapers as we have — prying into 
everything, blurting out everything, gossiping about every- 
thing, blundering to-day and correcting it to-morrow — is a 
real gospel dispensation ? Which excess is the worst % 

I am, however, quite sm*e that no amount of fire and 
fagots, and holy inquisitions, could ever make us believe 
that the strict censorship of the press which exists here is 
any better than the wildest license which we ever have in 
America. The mean between the two is, of course, the hap- 
py and golden mean — and the newspaper is like everything 
else earthly, there must be a taste of imperfection in it — the 
power to do good must bring with it the power to do evil. 

We do not look at a Roman newspaper any more, it is so 
absolutely worthless to us — but I preserve', to take with me to 
New- York, a file of one week's papers of the official Pontifi- 
cal gazette. I may live to see a regular American news- 
paper published in the city of Rome, when it will be interest- 
ing to compare the two. Oh, if I could only be certain of 
living long enough to make the comparison ! The babe is 
still unborn which shall see the beginning of such a reform. 
The shock which the revolution of 1848-'49, gave to Pius 
IX., who really had some thought of improvement, has 
extinguished all hope of melioration through the Church. 

We visited many of the most remarkable churches in 
Rome, as well without as within the walls. The common 
parish churches which are scattered through the city — there 



86 BASILICAS. 

are nearly four hundred of them — are mostly objects of no 
great interest, except as exhibiting the care which brings 
religion to every man's door, and has all its regular offices 
and ministrations performed at the appointed times, within 
the convenient reach of every individual in Kome. Some 
of these, however, and the so-called basilicas, are objects 
of extraordinary interest, either from their construction — 
the objects which they contain — works of art and 
vertu and relics — their antiquity the spots on which they 
are built — or the various histories and traditions connected 
with them. The seven basilicas, of course, we visited. 
They are the principal churches of Rome. They are called 
basilicas from their real or fancied, past or present resem- 
blance to the heathen basilica or judicial forum of antiquity. 
They are St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary the 
Greater, and the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, in the city, and St. 
Lorenzo, St. Sebastian, and St. Paul, without the walls. Be- 
sides these we visited the ancient Pantheon of Agrippa — in 
the days of the Cassars the temple to all the gods — now a 
Christian temple to the only God, under the name of St. 
Mary ad martyres } but visually called, from its form, the 
Rotunda, and characteristically called by Byron — 

" Shrine of all saints, and temple of all gods, 
From Jove to Jesus." 

St. Mary of the Angels, including the principal hall, the 
Pinacotheca, of the Baths of Diocletian, is a majestic church 
in the form of a Greek cross — a form so admirably adapted 
to a noble temple that this church has often suggested the 
remark that St. Peter's should have had that form. In the 
vestibule are tombs of Carlo Maratti, and Salvator Rosa, and 
several cardinals. The chapel of St. Bruno — one of its 
finest chapels — has a noble and heroic statue of that saint, 
by Houdon, of which Pope Clement XIV. said, " It would 



MALICE IN ART- 87 

speak if the rule of his order did not prescribe silence." 
Like the Pantheon, it is, at the same time, a magnificent 
specimen of ancient classical architecture of the noblest 
character, and of Christian ecclesiological art, worthy of the 
best days of the Romish Church. 

St. Mary Aventina is on the Aventine hill, and commands 
one of the best views of Rome and its environs. It is 
attached to the Priory of the Knights of Malta, and hence, 
in common parlance, is called the Priorato. 

In the Capuchin Church, St. Mary of the Conception, 
with which is connected the catacombs of the Capuchins, is 
Guido's masterpiece, the archangel Michael. The devil is 
said to be the likeness of a cardinal, subsequently Pope In- 
nocent X., who had criticised severely some of the artist's 
productions. By the way, this practice, so common with 
the great masters, of introducing into their most solemn and 
sacred productions the individual portraits of their enemies, of 
the highest rank in church or state, in some offensive charac- 
ter, for purposes of malice, revenge, Avit, or satire, is signifi- 
cantly suggestive, not only of the power and position of those 
artists, but of their lack of real religious feeling, and of their 
disgraceful malice. There is a signal instance in the Sistine 
chapel, the pope's own chapel — in Michael Angelo's picture of 
the Last Judgment, in which that great man introduces Biagio 
— a favorite of the pope — as standing in hell with ass's ears, 
and surrounded by a serpent. Biagio had suggested to the 
pope that some of the figures were indelicate, as they are, 
and this was the artist's revenge. The pope requested that 
the figure might be altered, but the artist said it was impos- 
sible — that while his Holiness might have released his friend 
from purgatory had he placed him there, he clearly had no 
power over him in hell, and so poor Biagio is still in 
torment. 

It was on the anniversary of the obsequies of the last 



88 SISTINE CHAPEL. 

pope that we visited the Sistine chapel, and saw the present 
pope, the same mild, good looking man that he is always 
represented. Surrounded by his cardinals and other eccle- 
siastical dignitaries, and in the presence of the secular digni- 
taries of Korae, and other spectators, high mass was then 
performed. I should make a blundering display of my igno>- 
rance of Roman Catholic forms and ceremonies, if I should 
attempt to describe what no description could make intelli- 
gible to you. The most distinguished archbishops and 
bishops officiated in the service — from golden censors 
incense was burned before his Holiness and wafted about his 
sacred head — as they flung their censors on high they bowed 
down before the holy father in acts of apparent worship. It 
almost seemed as though they were playing, as in a theatre, 
the scenes of the heavenly city, fast by the throne of God, 
and that the pope was playing the part of the Almighty 
Father. The chapel itself is covered on the ceiling and the 
walls all over with paintings. Michael Angelo's Last Judg- 
ment is there. They are all in fresco, I believe. The sing- 
ing is of the highest order, of course — only male voices' — not 
exactly male, but not female. The profusion of scarlet, 
when the cardinals are there, gives the whole scene such a 
scarlet look that you cannot help recalling the scarlatry of 
the Apocalypse. 

These details are from M 's letter : " The singers clad in 
purple silk robes with short white frocks, laid in fine plaits and 
trimmed with broad lace, take their places in the balcony, 
arranged as a small gallery on the side of the chapel. The 
walls and ceiling are covered with frescoes representing 
almost every scene in the Bible. 

" Steps covered with scarlet and green cloth, rise all around 
the chapel. On one side near the altar, opposite the door, 
is a throne on steps, with a large chair, and covered with 
scarlet and gold. Ladies are not allowed to enter the chapel, 



ST. PETER S. 



89 



so we were shut out, but an iron grating permitted us 
to see everything from our seats without, and we could see 
all the glory of the pope. 

" In the first place, I must tell you that on entering the pas- 
sage to the Vatican there are arranged a guard of Swiss sol- 
diers, in the gayest costumes, their pikes on their shoulders 
— at the entrance of the chapel were a number more, and in 
the porch were handsome young men dressed in black broad- 
cloth, with frills about their necks and wrists, of fine cam- 
bric, bearing large gold and silver maces, stationed each 
side of the entrance. 

" Soon the cardinals, in purple and scarlet robes, made 
their appearance — attended by two others clad in purple, 
whose business was to bear the trains and adjust the robes 
of the cardinals Avhen seated, arranging them so as to cover 
their feet and make them hang well. 

" The Pope entered from the rear, accompanied by a 
priest of every order, and clothed in every colored robe of 
silk. His robe was of scarlet trimmed with gold, and on his 
head was a large mitre. When performing the service this 
robe was frequently held open by his attendant priests, and 
underneath was a robe of white satin garnished with bur- 
nished gold. It was a gay scene to see so many dressed in 
all their royal robes arranged about the chapel, but it 
seemed to us like anything but a religious ceremony." 

In these churches, the finest of marble, and precious stones, 
and works of art, and offerings, and vows of the faithful, 
and the highest architectural taste, give an appearance of 
great richness — some are in the simplicity of true taste, and 
some in the gaudy and meretricious display of vulgar 
finery. 

St. Peter's has been described by every traveller in his 
own way — but no one has ever given any adequate idea of 
it. I shall not attempt to do so, for it is quite impossible to 



90 size of st. peter's. 

exhibit it as it strikes the senses on the spot, in its real im- 
mensity and beauty. 

When you first see it, it looks large — when you enter it you 
see, at first sight, that it is an immense chui-ch, but it is not 
till you have looked at its parts, and carefully observed the 
construction and purpose of the details, architecturally a"s 
well as religiously, and finally embraced the great purpose 
of the whole, that you are overcome and absorbed by such a 
work of man ! So great in every sense, so beautiful in 
every sense ! And then again, no sooner are you away 
from those details and their distribution, than you find it quite 
impossible to recall the sense of its proper and actual great- 
ness, and your first sensations of diminished wonder are forced 
upon you in spite of your careful convictions. I shall, 
nevertheless, without any attempt at description, endeavor 
to give you a few ideas of it, from which much can be 
inferred. 

It is approached by a court-yard or esplanade, of circular 
form, the circle being open at opposite sides of the centre. 
At one you enter — in the other is the church. 

This yard contains about seven acres, and the circle on 
the right and the left is a magnificent covered colonnade, of 
great height- — sixty-one feet — supported by immense Doric 
columns of stone, and surmounted by one hundred and 
ninety-two marble statues, of colossal size, on the top of its 
massive entablature. When you have walked up this colon- 
nade, on one side or the other, to the church, you have 
walked more than one eighth of a mile — and to enter the 
church itself, and walk straight through it from front to 
rear, you walk another eighth of a mile, inside the church. 
If you look up to the ceiling, it is one hundred and fifty- 
two feet high — as high as the topmost spire of a large 
church — if you wander through it, you find that the Avails 
of the church itself cover eight acres. On each side within 



INTERIOR. 91 

are five chapels, with each its altar — each chapel being by 
itself a magnificent church of respectable size. The dome is 
one hundred and thirty-nine feet in diameter inside, and to 
the top is more than twenty-four rods, in a perpendicular 
line, from the floor— the pillars which support this immense 
cupola have a circumference of two hundred and thirty-four 
feet. Beneath this sublime arch, in the centre, is the bal- 
dachin and the high altar beneath it. It is ninety-five feet 
high, and of corresponding proportions, and whether you 
consider them in their general effect, or in the details of 
their wrought bronzes and rarest and finest marbles and 
precious stones, and silver and gold — lighted up day and 
night by more than one hundred brilliant lamps — you may 
almost say that it is a fabric of celestial workmanship — a 
portion of the New Jerusalem sent down from Heaven. Be- 
neath the high altar are the remains of St. Petei", before 
which a solemn lamp burns perpetually. 

The interior of the church abounds in monumental sculp- 
tures in honor of those whom the Eoman Catholic Church 
delights to honor. Fine paintings, of the greatest masters — 
their masterpieces — are about the altars of the chapels and 
elsewhere, and in the vaulted dome, four hundred feet high. 

You may here study the old masters — as it seems in 
their best originals — for you are not always told by your 
guide that these pictures are none of them originals. Nor 
are they canvas to moulder, or paint to fade or mildew, but 
they are all imperishable mosaics of inconceivable work- 
manship — so perfect — perfect are the copies in both effect 
and detail — and those up in the vaulted roof of that dome, 
so sharp and clear in their outlines, so fine in their clare- 
obscure, so matchless in their foreshortening, so delicate in 
their shadows, so round in their relief, and so mysteriously 
lifelike in their expression, when, from the floor, you look at 
them in their dizzy and distant height — are found when you 



92 cost of st peter's. 

come near them to lose all their pictureness and beauty, and 
are almost like rude walls of cyclopean stones. What a 
triumph of art, in every sense, is such a structure. 

It took three hundred and fifty years to build St. Peter's, 
and it had cost, one hundred and fifty years ago, fifty mil- 
lions of dollars — and, since that time, large additions have 
been made to its cost, besides thirty thousand dollars a year 
in repairs and superintendence. St. Peter's has cost more 
than all the churches of all denominations in the United 
States put together. 

This great Christian temple is really one of the wonders 
of the world. Still, it is quite impossible, in looking at it, 
or passing through it, after having done so again and again, 
to make the mind realize any such apparent magnitude. It 
seems very large — wonderfully large — but not by any means 
so large as it really is. There is an inexplicable diminution 
from the truth, in spite of you, in looking at its vast propor- 
tions. All things considered, it is vastly more interesting 
than any other church in Rome, more than all the others 
put together — while each of the great basilicas is most 
deeply interesting. St. Peter's seemed a great temple to 
Christian art — St John Lateran a great temple to the 
Koman Catholic religion — and St. Paul's, Avithout the walls, 
a great and worthy temple to the living God. 

Perhaps the distinction which I make in the impressions 
produced by the different churches, has arisen somewhat 
from my own circumstances and feelings when I visited 
them. In St. Peter's, my attention was more directed to 
its artistic wonders. In St. John Lateran, our attention 
was much more attracted by that purely Catholic ceremo- 
nial — the grand procession of the Corpus Domini — which 
was moving through its lofty aisles, while we were there — 
and the decorations of the church seemed to be in harmony 
with such a display — and at St. Paul's we were the only 



st Paul's. 93 

persons in the church, so far as we saw, and I was in a fit 
temper of mind to be struck with the majestic simplicity 
and grandeur of its gray and solemn columns and lofty 
arches — "when unadorned adorned the most." 

St. Paul's is especially celebrated as being built on the 
spot where St. Paul was bui'ied, and his remains are beneath 
the high altar. It was originally built by Constantine the 
Great, and was, before St. Peter's, perhaps the most won- 
derful church in the world — its interior presenting one hun- 
dred and thirty-eight columns, many of them of ancient 
fabric — eighty of fine Greek marble, fluted, Corinthian — 
thirty to forty-two feet high, and eleven to fifteen in cir- 
cumference — others of Egyptian granite, and thirty of por- 
phyry. And in other respects the church was of great 
magnificence, but in 1824, workmen repairing the roof care- 
lessly set fire to it, and it soon fell in, broke through the 
vaulted ceilings, and burned with a furnace heat in the 
midst of those glorious colonnades — and the noblest marble 
columns and capitals and entablatures were burned to lime, 
and granite and porphyry were cracked and splintered into 
fragments. There were, over the grand arch of the nave, 
mosaics, made in the year 440, representing the Savior and 
the four-and-twenty elders of the Apocalypse, and the Apos- 
tles Peter and Paul, besides the portraits of all the popes. 
These escaped the fire and are still to be seen. By immense 
contributions of the Catholic sovereigns and the popes, 
since the catastrophe, the church has been rebuilt, but is not 
yet quite finished. Instead of the beautiful marble columns 
that were destroyed, the arches are now supported by 
eighty-nine immense columns of gray granite, brought from 
Northern Italy — floated on rafts to the Adriatic and thence 
brought by ships. Mosaic portraits of all the popes — all 
but the latter ones, of course, fancy likenesses — now orna- 
ment the church- — these were made at the great mosaic 



94 ST. JOHN LATERAN. 

works of the Vatican, and of course are productions of high 
art. Attached to this church are the principal cloisters of the 
Benedictines. There was some reluctance to admit us to see 
them, because of I forget what rule — -but the aid of Mariano, 
and the assurance that we were Benedictines, which he ex- 
plained, opened the doors with a significant smile from the 
keeper. 

Do we wonder whence comes the wealth to build and 
rebuild these splendid temples'? The contributions to which 
I have alluded explain the whole. When the tabernacle of 
the Lord is in ruin — when a temple is to be reared to the 
Most High — when the Savior and the Apostles and the 
Saints are to be honored by fitting memorials — faithful mon- 
archs and devoted millionaires vie with each other — not os- 
tentatiously, but as acts of religion — in making contribu- 
tions worthy of national treasuries. The Church of St. 
Paul is now almost deserted, because of sickly malaria that 
has made that locality so unhealthy. The air of the night, 
the evening and the morning, is death to those who inhale it. 
This pestilential exhalation I believe is gaining strength, 
and drawing in its parallels nearer and nearer to the city 
walls. Borne may be depopulated by it, and St. Peter's 
be deserted — wild beasts may lie there — there houses may be 
full of doleful creatures, and owls may dwell there, and 
satyrs may dance there. Who knows? It is not likely that 
such a desolation will come to pass. So the great desola- 
tions of the past were not likely. Still hei'e was ancient 
Bome. 

"The past has happened — and at last 
What future shall become the past?" 

The splendid cathedral of St. John Lateran is called 
Lateran because it occupies the site of the house of a Boman 
senator, Lateranus. That house was the episcopal resi 
dence of the early bishops of Bome, but finally gave place 



CORPUS DOMINI. 95 

to this basilica — Constantine assisted with his own hands to 
dig the foundations. It is now, and ever has been, the first 
church in Rome. Here the pope first enters upon his office, 
and here he is crowned. Here the Jews and infidels are 
baptized every year, and here the Pope himself, as priest, 
celebrates high mass twice a year — and here commences 
the annual round of the procession of the Corpus Domini, 
the greatest ceremonial of the Church of Rome — and here 
it was our good fortune to see it. I looked at it as I always 
do at such things, as one significant ceremony, and I bor- 
row the brief details : 

" We were fortunate to be there at the commencement of 
the ceremonies. The middle of the church was strewed 
with green leaves, and so was the path around the altar and 
through the sides to a side chapel. The cardinal arrived, 
clad in his scarlet robes, and, after kneeling, performed his 
many evolutions about the altar, waited on by the priests. 
Then moved the procession of a very large company of 
priests and boys, clad in white robes, holding large lighted 
candles, and with silk banners, preceding the host, with its 
halo of burnished gold like the sun. Then came the figure 
of the Savior on the cross, dressed with a crown of thorns, 
and a blue satin scarf tied around his loins — it was so life- 
like that it was painful to look at. Then came a large, 
white satin canopy, looking quite like a tent, under which 
walked the cardinal, bearing the Host, holding it up very 
high, with his eyes bent on the ground. A band of music, 
with singing, accompanied them as they marched round the 
church and passed over the green leaves that were strewn 
for their pathway, and so out into an adjoining room — all the 
bells within hearing were tolling during the time." 

While this church is particularly rich in its ornamenta- 
tion, and in its palace and museum of art and antiquities, 
it is richer in its relics. Here is the very mouth of the well 



9 b RELICS APPIAN WAY. 

of the woman of Samaria — it is sculptured with crosses, 
probably by the woman herself — a cracked column of the 
temple, split when the veil of the temple was rent — the real 
slab of porphyry on which the soldiers cast lots for the 
Savior's coat — here is the stone altar table, with the hole 
made through it by the falling of the consecrated wafer 
from the hands of a priest who doubted the real presence — 
and here is that wonderful holy staircase, the staircase of 
the house of Pontius Pilate, down which our Savior de- 
scended when he left the judgment seat, and which no one 
is now permitted to ascend except the devoutest penitents, 
and they by creeping up on their knees. There is also a 
fine portrait, by St. Luke, of the Savior at the age of 
twelve — a capital likeness, they say — and other relics equally 
real and true, without number. We asked Mariano if he 
believed in all these tilings. He said, " I don't know any- 
thing but what they tell me." If he were a philosopher, and 
not a poor Italian cicerone, what a depth and significance 
of wisdom might be discovered in that simple remark ! 
How truly we can all repeat it ! 

An excursion on the Appian way exhibits the ostentation 
of the ancient Romans, in connection with " the longing 
after immortality," which Addison makes Cato consider the 
crowning proof of the immortality of the soul. They knew 
the body would go to dust. How could they be gratified 
after death in annihilated consciousness, by monumental pride 
for the gaze of succeeding generations, by the ephemeral 
grief of the mourning friends, or the idle and heartless honor 
of contemporaneous crowds °i It was the divinity within 
them, pointing to a conscious hereafter, which caused them 
to expend so much on the monuments raised to the dead. 
It was along the Appian way that travellers went between 
the Eternal city and Naples, and the voluptuous watering 
places of the then, as now, justly celebrated bay, and 



MONUMENTS. 97 

waters, and shores, and islands, and villas, always in luxuri- 
ous harmony with ideas of mere earthly pleasure. It was 
along that noble road that in spring and autumn, when the 
Italian scene is in its highest beauty — when the vine, and 
the olive, the almond, the orange, the citron, the lemon, and 
the fig, in flower or fruit, scatter their fragrance all around 
— that the proud patricians, in their chariots, took their 
daily drives for relaxation and amusement — and along the 
lava pavements of the same grand entrance to the capital, 
in the presence of the thronging thousands of the Roman 
masses, hand-bound captive kings, and conquered heroes 
with their humiliated troops, and with loads of spoils, and 
standards, and trophies — and with lictors, and priests, and 
victims for the sacrifice — and with the clangor of trumpets, 
and the shouts of the populace — and with eagles, and gar- 
lands, and crowns, and incense — the successful commander 
and his faithful soldiers formed one of those magnificent 
and imposing processions constituting a Roman triumph. 
Hence it is not difficult to imagine why the sides of that 
Appian way were crowded with mausoleums and monuments 
for the dead, in the greatest variety of form and with 
almost every amount of expenditure. The monuments are 
there still — with few exceptions — crumbled in ruins and 
disintegrating in heaps — no longer monuments, nor ceno- 
taphs, nor sepulchres in appearance. They presume, 
indeed, to name some of them, but one generation gives one 
name and another generation changes it for another, for a 
reason, perhaps, which will demonstrate to the next that it 
must still be called by another. It was along this road, too, 
when these monuments were fresh and new, and united 
their glories with those of the magnificent palaces and villas 
that covered the Campagna, that St. Paul entered the 
great capital of the Cassars, a culprit, bound and walking 
between his keepers, not knowing what should befall him, 

5 



98 COLUMBARIA. 

and, doubtless, looking less at the splendors that surrounded 
him than up to Heaven, and repeating his first Christian 
aspiration, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do 1 ?" 

Along this road have lately been opened some ancient 
columbaria. These were to me an entirely unknown style of 
burial-places, and we did not fail to descend into the one in 
the most perfect preservation. 

The descent is by a stone staircase into a subterranean 
house or cellar, of the size of a small house, with a huge 
square pier in the centre to support the covering roof or 
ceiling — and the walls of this pier, and the external or sur- 
rounding walls of the room are filled with little niches — in 
tiers all around — say eighteen inches square — within each of 
which is a little urn for the ashes, or a lachrymatory, through 
which tears might fall on the treasured relics. Perhaps 
beside it is a little ancient lamp, that has known no oil or 
light for untold centuries — on the niche or a slab beneath is 
the inscription. If I had not already learned that copying 
inscriptions in and about Rome is a laborious waste of time 
for a hurried traveller, I should have copied many. I could 
not resist the temptation to copy one, which almost over- 
came me with its tenderness, its exquisite taste, and un- 
ostentatious parental grief. "Infanti Dulcissimce " — not 
another letter ! Not a name of parent, or child, or family, 
or age, or date — no complimentary description, no epitaph? 
ian lie — nothing on that stone but the parent's tears and 
swelling heart, written down in two expressive words. 

It is this great collection of pigeon-holes for the dead that 
is appropriately called a columbarium. That locality is full of 
them. Under ground and on the surface are the recognized 
monuments of some of the most celebrated ancient Romans. 

A few steps further on in the Appian way — we are now two 
miles from Rome — is the celebrated church basilica of St. 
Sebastian, a modern structure, rebuilt on foundations laid by 



ST. sebatian's. 99 

Constantine. It is mainly famous for its relics — too numer- 
ous to mention. I believe it has among them a portrait by 
that most industrious of the old masters, St. Luke — but its 
crowning relic is the piece of solid" pavement which contains 
the deep footprints of the Savior. This precious relic, with 
others, is carefully preserved in a lock-up, with a glazed 
door, by the altar — but in the centre of the church is a copy 
of it set among the other stones of the pavement constitu- 
ting the floor of the church. This stone stands precisely in 
the spot where the original was when the sacred foot of the 
Lord rested upon it, and Peter, surprised to meet him there, 
asked him whither he was going. Of course when the faith- 
ful discovered it — as they did three hundred years afterward 
— they knew the sacred relic, and caused a church to be 
erected over the holy spot ! 

Just within the entrance to the Church of St. Sebastian is 
the door by which the descent is made to the Catacombs — 
the celebrated labyrinth of subterranean corridors, extending 
over six miles, which were ancient at the time of the Cruci- 
fixion. The early Christians here hid themselves and their 
devotions from their persecutors — and here their martyrs 
and saints were buried — fourteen popes and one hundred 
and seventy thousand martyrs are said to have been here 
laid in their unknown graves. The bodies of St. Peter and 
St. Paul were long concealed there, and were discovered by 
a miraculous dream or vision of a young woman — as the 
tradition goes. They abounded in interesting rude sculp- 
tures and inscriptions, which have been removed to the 
Museum of the Vatican. We did not descend. 

I had determined — from the first outset of my travels — to 
withstand every temptation to enter these cities of the dead, 
which are scattered all over Europe and abound in Italy. 
The stifling and musty caverns, where the dead of ages on 
ages have slept in labyrinthian passages of darkness — never 



100 CATACOMBS. 

penetrated by any light, except that of the flickering and 
uncertain torch of the rash and curious traveller, who ven- 
tures into these deep solitudes and awful cells. How many 
accidents have happened ! how many have lost their way ! 
how many have been shut out from return by the falling 
in of earth ! how the light has gone out. by accident ! how the 
foot has stumbled ! all is unknown, except that they entered 
and have never since been seen. A whole school of boys 
from Rome — with their teacher and a guide — entered the 
Catacombs for a morning excursion of observation and 
amusement. They have never since been heard of! A 
young man entered without a guide, with a light and a ball 
of twine — the end of the twine fastened at the door — so that 
he might find the way back by following the thread, and 
then boast of having wandered alone and in safety through 
those entangled passages. By accident he dropped his 
twine after he had wound through numerous crooked alleys, 
and had doubled untold and undistinguishable corners. He 
stepped forward to take it up but lost both ball and thread. 
He felt for it, but dared not move another step — he looked 
with desperate sharpness, and grew nervous and bewildered, 
but he could not find it. He groped around in a small 
circle — but no thread ! His light was burning out — he 
watched it grow less and less, and dimmer and dimmer — his 
hand trembled, he dropped his light, and it went out. In 
his desperate panic he fell upon the earth, and his hand fell 
upon the twine ! He was restored to life, and found his 
way to the upper earth to caution his friends against such 
fool hardy enterprises. 

But the Catacombs of the Capuchins, which we visited 
afterward, were quite another thing. Mariano had taken 
us — before we were aware of his purpose — through a small 
subterranean door into an earthy passage to them. They 
are several apartments, neatly kept — the floor — earth — -is laid 



CATACOMBS OP THE CAPUCHINS. 101 

out in graves — like the beds of a garden, smooth and level — 
each grave so marked and numbered that it may be known 
when it was last opened. There were dead Capuchin 
monks, also — in the dress of their order — sitting in chairs or 
standing — the same brown frock and hood, the same girdle 
with the cross at the belt — and eyeless sockets and fleshless 
jaws and bones beneath their habitual caps, and even the 
characteristic beard on the dry and skinless chins, white 
and bony hands and feet and half exposed to view ! Ghost- 
ly and revolting images " that showed the dead in their last 
dresses," were made visible by lights suspended from the ceil- 
ing in chandeliers, which also revealed the ornaments of the 
walls and the ceilings — rosettes, and fancy borders, and 
corner and centre pieces like embroidered handkerchiefs, and 
picture frames, and chandeliers, and ornaments with their 
hangings, made of the natural unwrought bones of those bur- 
ied monks. It is the rule of that locality, that when a monk 
dies they open the grave of him who has been buried longest, 
take out his dry bones, and deposit in their place the mortal 
coil that has just been shuffled off and is hardly cold. Such 
of those bones as they need for ornamentation and fancy 
woi k, are used accordingly, and the rest are x'emoved to the 
common receptacle. You can fancy the nice display of 
the handiwork — no, you cannot, without seeing it. How, 
in infinite variety of combination, the larger bones of the 
pelvis, and the thigh-bones, the shoulder-blades, and skulls, 
are set off by the slender fibula and tibia — the graceful rib, 
and collar-bone, the perforated joints of the spine — the knee- 
pans, and the small bones of the hands and feet arranged in 
festoons, and flowers, and arabesques ! 

Isn't it religious, and devout, and godly, thus to profane 
the relics of the dead — even of the dead monks that were 
useless in life ? Abraham bought a burying-place to bury his 
dead out of his sight. Some ages, and some nations have 



102 CATACOMBS. 

burned their dead, others have buried theui — all to put theru 
out of sight, and in one way or another to fulfil the great 
proclamation — " Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt re- 
turn." " Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes," are 
the solemn last words to our dead — but here, in the so- 
called capital of the Christian world, a religious order of 
great respectability — in the line of religious orders — finds 
amusement and gratification of taste, in exposing in so pro- 
fane and ostentatious a manner the remains of their dead 
brethren ! 

The earth in which these dead are buried — like that of 
the Campo Santo, at Pisa — was brought from Jerusalem, 
that the dead may rest in the consecrated soil of the holy 
land. As the poor monk moves on through life, and when, 
at last, shadows — darker than those of his cell — shut out 
the green fields, and bright skies, and the faces of men for 
the last time, his narrowed spirit will, perhaps, find conso- 
lation in the thought that his body will receive consecrated 
burial in the sacred soil of the land where his Savior was 
buried — that body, too, whose dry bones, his humility will 
say, deserve no better honor than to be dug up and rattled 
about for purposes so puerile, and so disrespectful and 
shocking to all cultivated religious sensibility. In these 
Catacombs are, also, small chapels for the devotions of those 
who choose to worship there. 



ROMAN EDUCATION. 

TT^HE educational institutions and arrangements of Rome 
JL are a subject of much importance and interest — and 
amid the vast number of matters which attracted my atten- 
tion, I did not fail to glance at them. 

Rome is often called the Capital of the Christian world, 
and the phrase has passed without criticism, because it con- 
veniently enough expresses an idea which Protestants, as 
well as Roman Catholics, have sometimes occasion to ex- 
press. With the Catholics it is a favorite phrase, because 
it seems to imply what they are so ready to assert, that the 
Roman Catholic religion is the only form of real Christi- 
anity. It is the religious capital of the Roman Catholic 
world — and it is the capital of the Pope's temporal domin- 
ions. It is his capital, as the soi-disant vicar of Christ, and 
his capital as king of the Roman States. It is the only 
capital whose sovereign places upon earth the capital of His 
kingdom, whose kingdom is not of this world, and claims 
to sit upon His throne who is at the right hand of God, in 



104 EDUCATION IN ROME. 

the heavenly places, far above all principalities and pow- 
ers, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, 
not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. 
In the papal sense — but in no other — it is the capital of the 
Christian world, and no Protestant should use the phrase 
even by adoption. But in this, as in many other things, we 
yield much to the Roman Catholics in seeming to admit the 
justice of their exclusive claims. We call their church the 
"Catholic" church, and we leave to their exclusive use 
that most expressive sign of Christianity, the Cross. In my 
judgment, every Christian church in the world is a portion 
of the catholic church, and their places of worship should 
bear conspicuously the cross, that the worshippers in them 
should, so far at least, glory in the Cross of Christ. 

In such a capital of such a dominion, it is quite plain that 
the education of the people must be always and everywhere 
in the hands of those who, in being ordained as priests of 
the church, are, by force of the same ceremony, made officers 
and agents of the state. There are those who say that 
such a system as the Roman Catholic religion can only be 
sustained by the ignorance of those who profess it. There 
can be no greater mistake. Such a system could never be 
maintained, except by most careful and constant inculca- 
tion. If it be not taught diligently to the children, they 
will inevitably depart from it. It is not the religion of ig- 
norance. In our country we see so many of the Catholics who 
are ignorant, that we have transferred their ignorance to 
the mass of Catholics everywhere. It is, however, true, that 
in some ages all the learning of the world was in the 
Catholic church, and that in the most enlightened ages, in- 
cluding our own, protestantism has produced no men so 
cultivated, so well educated, so eloquent, or so spiritual and 
devout, that their equals in these respects were not sincere 
and faithful believers in the Roman Catholic church, co- 



UNIVERSITY OF ROME. 105 

worshippers and co-believers with the Pope of Rome. We 
should do ourselves — as well as the Catholic church — great 
injustice in disbelieving or doubting the sincerity and the 
piety of Fenelon and Bossuet, and Massillon and Bourdaloue, 
and Thomas a-Kempis and such men — I name these only be- 
cause their names are familiar to all. But if these, why may 
not millions of humbler names be written in the Lamb's 
Book of Life % If, with their light and intelligence, they were 
devout Christians in the Church of Rome, shall not the less 
enlightened many, who listened to their instructions, be per- 
mitted to sit down with them, and with Abraham and Isaac 
and Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven % 

I think there is some misapprehension of the educational 
system of the Roman Catholics, as it exists in the catholic 
capital, where certainly we should expect to see its best 
manifestations. I am quite willing to confess my previous 
ignorance on the subject. I had, however, in the hope of 
procuring some reliable information, written to our repre- 
sentative at the court of Rome for information, before I 
had any expectation of visiting Rome myself. He did me 
the honor to reply to my letter, and, avowing his ignorance, 
he promised to get the necessary information for me. I 
have never heard from him again — he is now absent — and I 
have relied upon my own inquiries on the spot. For my 
information I am mainly indebted to the civility of Father 
Secchi — professor of astronomy, and so in charge of the 
Observatory at the Roman College — and to one of the 
Christian brothers. 

At the head of the public educational institutions is the 
University of Rome, sometimes called the Collegio della 
Sapienza — the college of Avisdom — because over one of its 
entrances is the passage, in Latin, " The fear of the Lord is 
the beginning of wisdom." It is near the Pantheon, in the 
quarter of St. Eustatius. Its large inner court is a par- 



106 ROMAN COLLEGE. 

allelogram, and, as you enter it, on the opposite side is the 
front of the church, in the form of a triangle, and the other 
three sides are decorated with two rows of pilasters — one 
Doric and one Ionic — forming arcades. It has no external 
decoration — plain walls, with two rows of windows. The 
beauty and the science, as well as the quiet and seclusion^ 
are within the squares. This institution is more than six 
hundred years old, and by the friendly patronage of succes- 
sive Popes, has been extended and strengthened. In 1825, 
Leo XII entirely remodeled it, and gave to it and the Uni- 
versity of Bologna the rank of the two primary universities 
of his dominions. It has forty-two professors, and all the 
Faculties — each faculty being called a college — the college of 
theology, with five professors — the college of law, with seven 
professors — the college of medicine, with thirteen profes- 
sors — the college of natural philosophy, with eleven profes- 
sors, and the college of philology, with six professors. It 
has secular and lay teachers, as well as ecclesiastics. They 
are supported by the State, and instruction is entirely free, 
except that fifty dollars is demanded from those who take 
degrees. It has a large library and collections of minerals — - 
of geological specimens of the local formations — of Roman 
fossil remains — of all the marbles and stones of the ancient 
monuments — of comparative anatomy and zoology — of 
gems, and a botanic garden. The University has a large 
number of students. On the third floor of the University is 
a school of engineers, not under the special charge of the Uni- 
versity — and on the lower floor is the Academy of St. Luke, 
with its eleven professors and its schoolsof the fine arts. 

Next in importance is the Roman College, established by 
Gregory XIII — during whose pontificate the calendar was 
reformed — and after him sometimes called the Gregorian 
University. It is entirely under the management of the 
Jesuits. Father Secchi, to whom I was introduced in the 



ROMAN COLLEGE. 107 

observatory — he is professor of astronomy— with his char- 
acteristic civility, accompanied me through the visible por- 
tions of the establishment, and was exceedingly communi- 
cative and intelligent in bringing to my notice such matters 
as he knew would not fail to be interesting to me. The 
observatory is reached by a winding staircase, of reasonably 
easy ascent, which is cut out of the solid walls of the build- 
ing, two hundred years old — the whole staircase being 
within the solid wall. This gives one some idea of the 
stability with which such buildings were erected in the latter 
part of the sixteenth century, when this metropolitan col- 
lege of the Jesuits was built. The stairway was cut within 
the wall at a much more recent period. This College, too, 
externally, has no pretensions to beauty, and is built round 
a large square, or court, surrounded by a two-story portico, 
upon which front the rooms of the professors. 

The Roman College, or Gregorian University, has seven or 
eight hundred pupils, divided into the higher and lower 
schools. Instruction is entirely gratuitous. The students, 
however, must support themselves and pay for their books. 
None of them reside in the college. They are taken from 
the respectable classes only — and admitted only on testi- 
monials of conduct. They must be Roman Catholics, and 
must be taught religion in the college. The Government 
allows the institution twelve thousand dollars towards its 
expenses, and besides this, it depends upon endowments, 
legacies and the like, which are so common in Roman 
Catholic countries. To form a proper estimate of the char- 
acter and value of this University, it must be borne in mind 
that of this large number of students, much the larger por- 
tion belong to the inferior department, answering to the 
grammar schools or preparatory schools which are sometimes 
connected with our colleges. It takes the student, as soon 
as he has learned to read and to write, and has been taught 



108 ROMAN COLLEGE CURRICULUM. 

the elements of grammar — while he is almost a child — and 
in that inferior department he devotes three years to the 
grammatical course, and two to the courses of humanities and 
rhetoric. In these courses the instruction is by text-books 
and recitations. From the inferior schools he passes to the 
superior schools, in which all instruction is by lectures. 

This institution furnishes the most complete idea of the 
higher Italian education, and I shall, at the hazard of some 
tediousness, give you some of its details. 

The Inferior Schools have the following course of study : 

First Year. — Latin Grammar — selections from Cicero — 
select fables of Phaedrus — Greek Grammar and Italian 
Grammar — Exercises in select writers in Italian — Historia 
Sacra — Elements of Geography — Geography of Europe — 
Arithmetic. 

Second Year. — Latin Grammar — selections from Cicero — 
Cornelius Nepos — selections from Ovid and Phaedrus — Greek 
Grammar — selections from tbe Greek writers — Italian Gram- 
mar, with exercises in the Italian writers — Roman History, 
to the time of Augustus — Geography of Asia and Africa — 
Arithmetic. 

Thiid Year. — Latin Grammar — Cicero de Officiis, de Se- 
nectate, de Amicitia — Caesar's Commentaries — Virgil, Ovid, 
Tibullus, Catullus — Greek Grammar — selections from the 
Greek writers — Italian Grammar — exercises in Italian wri- 
ters — History of the Persian and Greek Monarchies — Ge- 
ographies of America and Oceanica — Arithmetic. 

Fourth Year. — Humanity — Principles of Rhetoric — Ci- 
cero's Select Orations — Sallust's Histories — Virgil, JEneid, 
Tibullus' Songs — Horace's Select Odes — Greek Syntax — 
selections from Greek oratory and poetry — Rules of Italian 
Elocution, with exercises in Italian writers — Chronology — 
Armillary Sphere. 

Fifth Year. — Rhetoric, Virgil, Horace, Catullus, Proper- 



HIGHER LEARNING. 109 

tius — selections from the Greek poets — Universal Geogra- 
phy — Cicero de Oratore — Livy's and Tacitus' Histories — 
selections from the Greek writers — History of Literature. 

In rhetoric instruction is given four hours a day, and in 
the other inferior schools five hours. 

In the Superior Schools their courses of lectures are — 

Greek Language — Xenophon and Homer. Elementary 
Mathematics — Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonome- 
try, Conic Sections. Introduction to the Higher Calculus — 
Analytic Geometry, Algebraic Series, Equations. Physical 
Chemistry — Principles of Chemistry, Experimental Physics. 
Physical Mathematics — Optics, Acoustics, Hydronamics, Hy- 
drostatics, Mechanics. Astronomy — Mundane System, 
Theory of the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies, Spherical 
Trigonometry. Higher Mathematics — Differential and In- 
tegral Calculus. Natural Theology — Psychology, Cosmology, 
Ontology, Logic. Ethics — Decaiology, Eudaimonology. 
Critical History of Philosophy — The principal heads of Nat- 
ural and Revealed Religion. Sacred Eloquence — Panegyric, 
Homiletics. Reading the Scriptures, Religious Discussion, 
Catechism, Spiritual Exercises. Sacred Rites — Eastern and 
Western Liturgies. Ecclesiastical History — From the Tenth 
to Sixteenth Centuries. Moral Theology — Human Conduct, 
Conscience, Laws, Commands of God and the Church. 
Topical Theology — The Unity and Trinity of God, Grace. 
Canonical Institutions. Oriental Languages — Hebrew Gram- 
mar, Book of Deuteronomy, Arabic, Chaldaic and Syriac 
Grammars, Portions of Arabic, and Syriac, and Chaldaic 
Scriptures. Dogmatic Theology — Scriptures, Tradition, 
Analogy of Reason and Faith, the Church and its Head. 
Sacred Literature — Introduction to the Sacred Scriptures, of 
the Literal Sense of the Bible, Selections from the New 
Testament. 

Two years are devoted to this course in Philosophy, and 



110 COLLEGE OF THE PROPAGANDA. 

three are required for a degree of Dr. Ph. — and four years 
constitute the complete course in Theology — the candi- 
dates for degrees and honors being subjected to examinations, 
discussions, and other exercises, in public as well as private. 
And that all the students may hold religion to be preferred 
before anything else, they are incited to study and practise" 
it, by exhortations, penance, and holy communion — and 
to imbue their minds with heavenly wisdom they are to 
study and to commit to memory the chief heads of Christian 
Doctrine. 

The schools open at seven a. m. throughout the year, and 
continue in session three hours. Then a recess till about 
four hours before sunset, when the afternoon exercises com- 
mence, and continue also three hours. 

They have four short vacations in the year, which, to- 
gether with the great number of religious holidays scattered 
through the year, make the days of actual instruction about 
the same as in American Colleges. 

The Library of the Roman College is a choice and inter- 
esting one of seventy thousands volumes — exceedingly rich 
in Bibles and Commentaries — Theology — Church Fathers — 
Councils — Canon Law — Civil Law — Scholastics — Ecclesias- 
tical and General History — Antiquities, and Greek, Latin, 
and Italian Literature. And it has many curiosities of re- 
markable interest and of great antiquity — but having lost 
my memorandum of them, and, not having time to return 
for another look, I do not venture a description or enumer- 
tion of any of them. 

There is also the famous College of the Propaganda, a 
missionary school, distinguished for its polyglottal exhibi- 
tion, in which all races, colors, and tongues, are exhibited, 
to the number of some fifty odd. This occurs at another 
time of the year, and I only looked at the College a few 
moments, and bought, at its bookstore, a Roman Ritual, in 
the beautiful typography of the press of the Propaganda. 



SCHOOLS. Ill 

There is the Seminario Apollinario, for clergymen, with 
seven hundred scholars — day scholars — instruction free. 
Receiving $(3,000 from the government. It has substan- 
tially the same course of study as the Roman College, ex- 
cept that it omits astronomy and the higher calculus. 

The Seminary of San Pantaleo, a free school for me- 
chanics, &c. — all day scholars — in reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, having about four hundred scholars, is another of 
the public schools. 

There are also large private and boarding schools — pay 
schools — of which I did not attempt the details. 

The beautiful grounds of the Pincian hill in fair weather, 
at times not devoted to study, are thronged with more 
or less numerous groups of students in the dresses of their 
respective schools — exceedingly good looking, well dressed, 
and intellectual, sometimes accompanied by their teachers, and 
almost always with the holiday, do-nothing lounge and stroll 
which sits so well on an Italian. 

The Universities are State seminaries, supervised by and 
accountable to the State as State — while the Theological 
Seminaries are subject to the bishops as ecclesiastics, as 
officers of the Church, not of the State. 

The bishops are also the visitors of the public schools, if I 
may call them so, of which I am now about to speak. 

Elementary instruction is provided for the people in the 
three classes of schools, the Regionary schools, the schools of 
the Christian Brothers, and the night and private schools. 

The Regionary schools, scaole regionare, are established 
and supported by the city, in the different quarters or 
regions of the city, entirely free from charge. There are 
fourteen of them in as many different quarters of the city, 
with an average attendance of some forty scholars in each. 

The schools of the Christian Brothers are more numerous. 
and constitute an important system of means for public 



112 CHRISTIAN BROTHERS. 

education in Roman Catholic countries, especially in 
Rome. 

The Christian Brothers, or Brothers of the Christian doc- 
trine, are an independent order of teachers, found every- 
where where the Roman Catholic religion exists in any 
considerable degree. You and 1 have often seen them irt 
Canada. I have met them in the St. Lawrence, from 
Quebec to the lakes, and on the Ottawa, on the steamers, and 
in the cars, in the cities, and the villages, with their low- 
crowned, broad-brimmed hats, their plain white semi-cleri- 
cal bands, and their course and cheap, but comfortable and 
respectable long gowns. 

Their vows -are five, Chastity, Poverty, Obedience, Teaching 
gratis, and Stability, that is, constancy to their vocation or 
order. Their simple dress — always the same in fashion and 
material — their habits of quiet virtue, and devotion to their 
calling, enable them to meet all their wants on their little 
salary of twelve dollars a month, at Rome. 

Contributions from the Government, from the City, and 
from charitable individuals, by legacy or otherwise, provide 
the small means necessary to procure the plain school- 
room with its simple appointments, and the books and 
stationary necessary to keep up the schools. Their order 
forbids them to accept even the smallest present from their 
pupils. Their schools are free to all — the rich as well as 
the poor- — but they prefer to have their schools filled by the 
poor, because their order is a charitable one, and the rich 
are able to provide schools. The principal object, the pur- 
pose, of their schools, is to teach religion, and they teach 
letters only as necessary and subsidiary to religious instruc- 
tion. They gave me the latest statistics — 1852 — of the 
schools throughout the world. The whole number of pupils 
is 264,249, of whom 221,000 are in France, 4,215 in the 
Pontifical States, 4,055 in Canada, 4,962 in the United 



SCHOOLS OF THE BROTHEES. 113 

States, 14,026 in Belgium, 6,834 in Savoy, 6,856 in Pied- 
mont. These figures show how far, very far, inferior the Papal 
dominions are in this sort of provision for education, to 
other portions of the Roman Catholic world. The activity 
of the order has heen evidenced hy the increase in the num- 
ber of scholars, which from 1844 to 1852 increased from 
198,188 to 261.249. 

It may be interesting to you to know something of the 
mode of conducting the schools. 

They have mass every day at eight o'clock in the morning. 
They cross themselves with holy water on entering the 
school. The school opens and closes with prayer, said by 
all, before a crucifix. Every half hour during the day their 
studies are suspended for a short prayer in Latin, before a 
crucifix. Half an hour every day is devoted to the cate- 
chism. They are obliged to attend divine service together 
every Sunday. They must all confess at least once a month. 
The confessor comes every Saturday, and such as choose to 
do so, confess oftener than once a month. They are urged 
to do so by religious motives. They are bound to take 
the communion, also, at least once a month, and they are 
excited to do so oftener, and they do so usually every Sun- 
day. 

A great spirit of emulation is excited in the scholars. 
Their discipline and progress is founded on emulation. 
They have frequent discussions and exercises, in which they 
form parties and take sides. There is a sort of throne on 
which is seated, to preside over the discussion, the one who 
carried off the palm at the last discussion. Each party has 
its flag. In the school where I was — and perhaps in all 
others — the two parties were the party of Rome and the 
party of Carthage, and the banners of those two hostile na- 
tions waved over their respective parties during the contest. 
The successful party takes the flag of its adversary, and 



114 CHRISTIAN BROTHERS. 

plants it, as a trophy, beneath its own. The flag is a party 
trophy — is awarded to the best party, and there is a cross 
of honor — which is worn for three or four days as an 
individual honor by the best one of the best party, who 
also presides on the throne at the next contest — 
which is a different contest, with a new construction 
of parties. There are also examinations during the 
year in all the schools, at which are ascertained the few 
very best scholars in each school, and these chosen few, once 
a year, meet and undergo a grand examination in the pres- 
ence of the patrons, the visitors of the schools, the chiefs 
of the order, the friends of education, and the dignitaries of 
the church — a grand of occasion. The examination is by 
examination papers, and questions, and specimens of their 
work. They have gold and silver medals for specific 
mei'it. 

At my request I was presented with the prize production in 
arithmetic of Oreste Bencibenga, a lad of fifteen years, for 
which he received the first silver medal — and the prize pro- 
duction in penmanship of Telemaco Vighi, aged thirteen, for 
which he received the third medal for penmanship. I 
bring them with me to America as mementoes, and I here 
add my transatlantic voice in praise of the exceeding correct- 
ness and beauty of the productions. 

He who excels all his competitoi's in this grand test of 
progress and merit, is made Emperor of the Christian doc- 
trine, and for a short period he is in high honor in Rome. 
He is presented to the Pope, and is the only individual in 
Eome, except his Holiness, who has the freedom of the papal 
palace, to come and go as he pleases. Armed men from 
the papal service stand at his father's door to do his bidding, 
and to wait upon him, and a carriage from the Pope, with 
servants in the papal livery, take him to and fro when and 
whither he desires to go. This lasts, if I remember, thirty 



SAN MICHELE. 115 

days. The last Emperor of the Christian doctrine was the 
son of 

" A poor cobbler that lived in a stall, 
Which 3erved him for parlor and kitchen and all." 

And there, at his humble door, for the appointed period, 
stood the papal servitors — and there the papal steeds pranced 
and champed their bits, and little Crispin moved in state 
while his poor father hammered the soles and drew the cord, 
and sung his Italian shoemaker's songs, with all a father's 
pride and all a cobbler's humility. For this I have not the 
authority of the teachers, but it was related to me by an 
intelligent and most respectable and devout Roman Catholic 
citizen of New- York, whose faith and whose wealth, and 
position at home, secured for him civilities and honors at 
Rome, of which he was justly proud. 

In addition to these schools, there are twelve or more 
night schools, of some sixty or seventy scholars each, which 
are also free. They are supported by private contributions. 

There is another class of educational institutions, of which 
I visited but one — a sort of charity industrial school. Of 
these I have nothing like statistics. The one which I 
visited — San Michele — is certainly a remarkable establish- 
ment. It has several hundred beneficiaries, from little 
children all the way up to middle life. I conversed with 
one woman, making silk belts or watch ribbons, who had 
been there twenty-two years. It is a great school of relig- 
ion, and letters, and industry, and a factory of various works 
of useful and fine art. We looked through it. The in- 
mates are fed on the plainest fare, and all the arrangements 
are on the lowest level of expense. I was curious enough 
to ask one of the matrons what was her salary — she said, 
besides her living, twelve dollars a year. I was told that 
while all its beneficiaries are the children of poverty and 



116 ROMAN EDUCATION. 

want, still the advantages of being there are so desirable, 
that without being exceedingly devout and faithful Catholics, 
and securing powerful interests besides, it is impossible to 
have a child admitted there. 

How different in all these particulars from the American 
system of public and popular education ! But while we 
are bound to say that the provision for education in Home 
is much inferior — very much inferior — to the provision in 
most of our States, we must admit that it is also superior 
to that of some of our States which are intensely Protes- 
tant. Some of these teachers told me that there were but 
few of the Roman people that could not read and write. I 
was, however, told by other Italians quite the reverse. I 
had no means to verify the statements. We shall be certain 
to do injustice to the Romans, if we judge them in this 
particular by comparing the number who attend school with 
the population of the city. I do not know what proportion 
the children bear to the whole population, but it must be 
much less than with us, there are so many thousands — sol- 
diers, priests, religious orders, male and female, etc. — who 
are condemned to lives of celibacy, and yet in the census 
add to the grand total of the people. 



EXCURSION TO TIVOLI. 

OF the great number of excursions from Rome, of consid- 
erable length, I determined to take but one — that to 
Tivoli — the Tibur of the ancients. One of the first things 
for a hurried traveller to learn is that at all the resting-places 
of travel — the ingenuity and interested industry of couriers, 
valets, hotel-keepers, and livery stable men, have hunted up 
all places and things that can seem to interest one, and 
that, unless he be quite careful, his time will be wasted on 
things which are of the most trifling importance, in compari- 
son with others quite sufficient to occupy his whole time 
profitably. In this respect I found Mariano of the greatest 
service. His great knowledge of all the details of Roman 
sight-seeing, and his honest desire to render the most valuable 
service in his power, with economy of time, labor, and money, 
after a few words from me as to the general character of 
my wishes, enabled him to consult my tastes and anticipate 
my wishes, and to show us as much of Rome— ancient and 
modern, secular and religious — in her most interesting 
aspects, as our time would permit. He said that Tivoli was 



118 SACRED HILL. 

was worth all the rest of the excursions about Rome, and 
so we started for Tivoli. 

We left Rome by the gate of St. Lawrence — Porta Saa 
Lorenzo — taking a second look as we passed at the ancient 
and interesting basilica of San Lorenzo, where repose the 
remains of St. Stephen, proto-martyr, and St. Lawrence. 
We soon struck the ancient Via Tiburtina, and over its an- 
cient pavement pursued our course almost due east, through 
charming landscapes. We soon passed the Velian Hill, 
three miles from the city, subsequently and more usually 
called the Mons Sacer, from the oath the people there 
took never to revolt against the Tribunes. It was to this 
hill, five hundred years before the Christian era, that the 
populace of Rome, borne down with hopeless debts — created 
by the enormous usuries of the richer class — rushed, in un- 
organized crowds of thousands and with the rage of a mob. 
The soldiers sympathized with the people, but their oaths to 
the Consuls — for which the Roman soldier had a never-failing 
reverence — prevented their taking arms against them. The 
people proposed to assassinate the Consuls — to cancel the 
oath — but the soldiers refused to permit it, and finally con- 
cluded that if they could not attack the Consuls and the 
Senate they could at least desert them. They raised their 
standards, and changed their officers, and under a Plebeian 
leader, encamped on the Velian Hill, by the banks of the 
Teverone — there to repudiate their debts, and found a Ple- 
beian city and a democratic nation of working men. After 
long diplomatic negotiations between them and the Senate 
the debts were all cancelled by law — perhaps, the first gen- 
eral and summary bankrupt law of which we have any 
account — and the venerable Menenius Agrippa made the 
adroit and touching speech — given by Livy — and closing 
with the famous apologue of the body and the members, so 
finely used by St. Paul to the Corinthians, five hundred years 



THE TRIBUNES. 119 

later, to illustrate the oneness and harmony of the offices 
and gifts in the church, and introduced and bluntly para- 
phrased by Shakespeare fifteen hundred years still later in 
Coriolanus. 

This mollified the resentment of the people, now that the 
debts were cancelled, but as security for the future their 
leaders demanded that proper magistrates of their own — 
Tribunes of the People — should be created, to which the 
Senators and all but Plebeians should be ineligible — and 
there, on the mount sacred to freedom, were chosen the 
first Tribunes of the People, and under them and the commit- 
tee of the senate, in orderly and rejoicing columns, the 
successful rebels marched in triumph back to the city — and 
the Velian Hill was ever after called the Sacred Hill — and 
was considered as the rallying spot of the friends of liberty 
— to which the people and the army often threatened to re- 
tire and thence to dictate terms to the aristocracy — that 
aristocracy, that in ancient Rome, was always in conspiracy 
against the people — always combined to oppress them with 
unequal laws — always ready to plunder them of their 
property and overwhelm them with enormous debts by the 
most remorseless usury, and to drive them to despair by 
holding or selling as slaves those who were unable to pay 
their debts. It is really only the convulsive spasmodic rem- 
edies — so frequent and so effectual in .Roman history — 
that entitles even the Roman Republic to be classed among 
free states. The so-called constitution of the Roman Re- 
public was an ingenious and delusive conspiracy against the 
freedom of the people. 

As it was the oppression and slavery of creditors that first 
drove the army and the people to the Sacred Hill, and that 
resulted in a thorough bankrupt law — so it was the attempt 
to enforce the fugitive slave law of ancient Rome that a sec- 
ond time brought to that consecrated spot the soldiers in open 
rebellion against the Decern vris. 



120 VIRGINIUS 

The beautiful daughter of a Plebeian Centurion was 
seized in a public school and claimed as a slave, while her 
father was absent in the army. With much difficulty Avas 
delay procured to get the father to Rome to defend his 
daughter, who, meantime, was held in custody of the claim- 
ant. The father came and pleaded the cause of the darling 
of bis heart, but all in vain, the Decemvir found the law and 
the fact clear, and ordered her delivered to the claimant. 
The father begged a moment for the farewell word and kiss 
of his child — this was granted, the claimant, however, to be 
present. He took her in his arms and wiped the tears from 
her face. 

" Straightway Virginius led the maid a little space aside — « » « 

— Hard by, a flesher, on a block had laid his whittle down, 
Virginius caught the whittle up and hid it in his gown. 
And then his eye grew very dim and his throat began to swell, 
And, in a hoarse, changed voice, he spake, « Farewell, sweet child ! farewell ! 1 
' Then clasp me round the neck once more, and give me one more kiss — 
' And now, mine own dear little girl, there is no way but this. ' 
With that he lifted high the steel, and smote her in the side, 
And in her blood she sank to earth, and with one sob she died. 
Then with white lips and bloodshot eyes, Virginms tottered nigh 
And stood before the judgment seat, and held the knife on high. 
' Oh, dwellers in the nether gloom, avengers of the slain ! 
'By this dear blood I cry to you, do right between us twain !' " — Macaulay. 

The Decemvir ordered him arrested — but the lictors dare 
not touch him, and the crowd opened to him as he rushed 
through the streets, bent his way to the army, and told the 
bloody story to his comrades and to the soldiers. They soon 
marched to the city, where they found the whole people 
excited to madness by the tragedy that so came home to 
their bosoms. The bloody corpse had been carried on an 
open litter through all the principal streets, till temple and 
palace, and forum and private home, were deserted to join 
the universal grief and indignation. The army encamped 
on the Sacred Hill, and never left that threatening spot till 
every Decemvir was dead or driven from Rome. 



LAKE TARTARUS. 121 

I do not send you these memories of the hackneyed stories 
of our school-boy studies, as novelties, but to give you 
specimens of the old memories which are so freshly brought 
up as we pass the spots with which they are associated. 
We see and hear but the clues and catch-words of the great 
dramas of the past three thousand years, and as we take the 
clue we are foi'ced to repeat the passage that you may see 
and feel where we are in the play. 

And how should we get an idea of the state and society 
and manners in ancient Rome as forced upon us here, if we 
did not call up these repudiations and bankrupt laws — these 
vigilance committees and lynch law judgments of the coun- 
trymen of Brutus — the assassin, regicide — " the noblest 
Roman of them all." 

Onward to Tivoli, not stopping half as long to look at 
the Sacred Mount as it has taken you to read what I have 
said about it. As on the Appian way, so on this Tiburtine 
way, are some remarkable sepulchral monuments. That of 
the Plautian family — which is one of the most noble and 
best preserved in or about Eome — is some fifteen miles from 
the city. It stands in the vicinity of Lake Tartarus, and 
in the sulphurous atmosphere of Solfatara, and near the 
Lucan bridge, so widely and justly celebrated as one of the 
most picturesque objects in this land of beauty. 

Lake Tartarus presents one of the most interesting in- 
stances of the encrusting and petrifying action of calcareous 
waters. Spread over a large surface even now, it was for- 
merly much larger, and has for ages on ages been rapidly 
depositing a calcareous precipitate, which takes the forms of 
the reeds and twigs and leaves and grasses — as they have 
grown — as they have been trampled down or crushed — and 
as they have died and decayed. Those on the surface ex- 
hibit these forms, but deeper down it becomes a solid rock, 
of the usual hardness of such deposits, and constitutes the 

C 



122 SOLFATARA. 

rock called travertine, which i?, and for ages has been, used 
so extensively in ancient and modern Rome, and elsewhere, 
for the finest architectural erections and ornaments. We 
were constantly meeting powerful teams of those beautiful 
Roman oxen, and sometimes those downcast, sullen, and 
malicious-looking black-eyed buffaloes, hauling immense 
blocks of it toward Rome. The quarries, I believe, are inex- 
haustible. 

The little lake and stream of the Solfatara are also inter- 
esting — taking their name from their strong exhalations of 
sulphur. When we came to the stream it seemed like a 
canal of diluted milk. I believe it is really a canal, and 
always of that color. It flowed with a rapid, but quiet and 
placid current, through banks of great regularity, and fol- 
lowing it up a little distance, you reach the lakelet, which is 
now reduced to a breadth of about two hundred feet, while 
it is in depth about the same number of feet — and its length 
only about three times that. You throw a stone into it, and 
after it has had time to sink and settle into the depths of 
the poisonous ooze that constitutes the bottom, immense 
volumes of gas let loose are belched forth with the bubblings 
of miniature volcanoes. On its surface, the thick matters 
that are thrown up unite and cohere, and the dust, and 
perhaps seeds and little plants, settle there and form little 
isles, that are blown and rocked by the breezes and whirled 
about by the eddies, as it were in the gambols of childish 
playfulness. This has given it sometimes the name of the 
lake of the floating islands. You might stand and watch 
them till the sulphurous vapors should destroy you — sulphur 
and beauty and danger, all together, may well remind us of 
another lake, to which it said that we sometimes are insen- 
sibly drawn by the pursuit of beauty and pleasure. 

A few miles further on, we left the road to Tivoli to 
visit the ruins of the wonderful villa of the Emperor Adrian. 



Adrian's villa. 123 

This emperor, you know, chose this romantic spot to build 
here his favorite villa. It commanded views of the Sabine 
mountains, the highlands of Tivoli, and the Alban hills, 
with their forests, and towers, and temples — the plains 
sweeping up to the mountains — and, afar off in the west, 
Rome in all her ancient glory, threw back the beams of a 
setting Italian sun, from the temples and palaces that sat in 
such admired confusion upon her seven hills. The Koman 
Empire was then at its widest extent. He was most pro- 
foundly and elegantly educated in all the learning of Greece 
and Eome. His palace was the temple of science and the 
arts — literary men cultivated their taste and men of science 
enriched their minds in his conversation. The style of his 
mind may be somewhat inferred from the reply of the phi- 
losopher Favorinus, who often disputed with the emperor, 
but always yielded the argument. He was reproached by 
his associates for thus sacrificing the truth to the facilities 
of a courtier. Said he, " It is dangerous to be right with a 
man who has thirty legions to refute your argument with.'' 
Adrian had travelled as an emperor but with the simplicity 
of a democrat — bareheaded, and on foot — through all parts 
of his domains, domestic and colonial, then extending from 
the Black Sea to the Bay of Biscay, and from Egypt to 
Scotland, and on his return, determined in this spot to tax 
his taste, his learning, his patronage, and his wealth, in 
bringing together the miniature reproduction of all the 
places of the highest celebrity and interest in letters, and 
art, and pleasure, which he had visited, to be grouped in the 
space of some, four square miles. Here were Helicon, and 
Parnassus, and the vale of Tempe — the Lyceum, the Acade- 
emy, the Prytaneum, the Poecile of Athens — the Tartarus of 
endless punishment, and the Elysian fields of the Pagan 
Heaven, the Serapion of Canopus in Egypt, the Temple of 
the Stoic?, the Maritime Theatre, the Imperial Palace, 



124 ruins of Adrian's villa. 

barracks large enough almost for those thirty legions, &c. 
Adrian's health soon failed and he sought invigoration at 
the corrupt and voluptuous watering-place, Baioe, on the 
Bay of Naples, where he died. He was buried in the 
enormous tomb in Rome, built by himself — now stripped of 
its ancient characteristics and converted into a fortress — the 
celebrated castle of St. Angelo, on the bank of the Tiber, 
and connected with the city by the Bridge of St. Angelo — 
the ancient ./Elian Bridge. 

There are no ruins in all Italy to compare with the 
Villa of Adrian, it is said — we certainly have seen nothing 
to equal it. While at one period, when ruins were at a 
discount, large numbers of statues, and marbles, and capitals, 
and columns of exquisite workmanship, were burned for 
building-lime, there still have been dug from these ruins, 
from time to time, great numbers of the statues and works 
of Grecian, Eoman, and Egyptian art, which constitute now 
the most precious ornaments of the museums of the capitol, 
and the Vatican, and of private collections. Fragments of 
frescoes, are still seen about the ruined walls, and great 
mosaic floors, and noble colonnades are still there exposed to 
the outside weather, and arches on arches are in your path 
as you wander on. Still the architecture has really almost 
passed away, and like all other ruins it is their suggestions 
and associations that alone make them so interesting. We 
wandered across the ploughed field, that lay on one side of 
the ruins, that we might get a better view of the whole, and 
as we walked on the soil composed of the debris of ruined 
temples, it was humiliating to human pride, to see — scat- 
tered on the surface and in the furrows, in great profusion — 
wherever we stepped, little fragments of porphyry, and 
jasper, and sienite, and the precious marbles, while in the 
paths sparkled the crystals of disintegrated mosaics — even 
in a farmer's road, through a ploughed field, Mariano scraped 






TIVOLI. 125 

away the soil with his hand a few inches deep, and disclosed 
a portion of a mosaic floor, old as the time of Adrian, and 
still solid in its place. 

Ihe grottoes, and groves, and corridors, and colonnades of 
imperial luxury, have given place to trees and bushes and 
weeds. As we stepped about amid the still mouldering piles, 
the little beautifully-speckled Italian lizards — the only inhabi- 
tants — started constantly before us and ran rapidly up the 
still perpendicular walls — and as we were admiring the abun- 
dant suggestive little forget-me-nots, growing amid the buried 
and forgotten, a flight of crows, flapping above us, aroused 
us by their caws, to the exclamation, " And are you, too, still 
hoping to find the remains of these dead emperors?" 

We passed out through orchards of venerable olive trees, 
and drove to Tivoli, only a mile or two further on. 

This old and decayed town, founded more than two 
thousand years ago, is nobly situated on the banks of a 
rocky ravine, of about eighty feet in depth, and sweeps some 
half a mile around its base. It is eight hundred feet above 
the sea — while above it, and across the stream, stretches beau- 
tifully towards the sky the hill of Eipoli, abounding in the 
most charming views from within and from without. The 
town itself, and the neighboring highlands, were apparently a 
favorite site for the villas of the most distinguished of the 
old Roman literati. Here are the ruins of the extensive 
villa of Maecenas — of the villa of Catullus, and his summer 
retreat on the far up hill-side — the villa of Sallust — of 
Horace, as it is sometimes called — the villa of Quintillus 
Varus, of great extent, and from its mountain belvideres 
looking down upon the other villas and the falls, and out 
upon the Campagna of Rome, even to the sea — the villa of 
Cassius— -the lean and hungry Cassius— of Brutus, and 
Bassus, and Propertius, and many others. These ruins 
were once full of works of art — they were almost quarries 



126 TEMPLE OF HERCULES SAXONUS. 

of sculptures, from which modern research has exhumed 
treasures of the choicest works, which are now to be 
found in the Museum of the Vatican and other collections. 

We had a day worthy of the place — bright, but mild, 
and balmy and transparent. We drove through the filthy, 
narrow and dilapidated streets of the dirty, compact town, 
to the hotel, near the celebrated temple of the Sybil, as it is 
usually called — the Sybil said to have predicted the Savior — 
but more recent examinations are said to change its charac- 
ter to that of the temple of the Hercules Saxonus. May 
we not soon insist that Hercules was an Anglo-Saxon, and 
that his many labors and triumphs were but mythic and 
prophetic foreshado wings of the " manifest destiny " of the 
Nou sine diis animosus InJ'ans, that now supports the stars and 
stripes. 

Our first look was at that celebrated ruin, and at its base — 
for it stands on the very verge of the abyss — we looked 
down upon the falls and the ravine, and out and upward 
to the surrounding hills. From this point the falls present 
no great attraction to any one, much less to us, who are 
familiar with the falls of our own country. We agreed 
with those who have said that they saw little here to 
justify Byron's poetic extacy in sight of what he calls the 
"Hell of Waters." We should, however, remember that 
all has been greatly changed since Lord Byron was here. 
Two years after his death, an unparalleled swelling of the 
mountain streams, raised the little Anio to the dignity of a 
fearful torrent, causing a most destructive inundation — 
sweeping away the barriers which had confined the water^ 
and carrying into the chasm below one church and thirty- 
six houses in the immediate neighborhood of the temple of 
Hercules Saxonus, and undermining the temple itself, which 
now stands on overhanging masses of travertine rock — the 
softer tufa of the rock being washed away. Now, after it 



FALLS OF TIVOLI. 127 

is all over, when I think of our careless lounging about 
there — we dined in the open air, on the table rock at the 
base of that temple — and descending through subterranean 
passes, over little frail and slippery planks and bridges, to see 
the grotto of Neptune, and the grotto of the Sirens, and what 
was left of the grand cascade, and to imagine how it used to 
be, I recur to the peril with a sort of shudder. 

To save the temple and the rest of the village, the main 
stream has been directed from its ancient channel, since the 
days of Byron, but when one sees where that stream went 
in its full torrent, in the path which is now occupied by only 
a comparative rivulet, he can well see how it might be called 
a hell of waters — realizing all the dangers, all the terrors 
and all the pains which irresistible waters could inflict upon 
its victims. Those who are at all familiar with the manner 
in which calcareous hills and cliffs form marvellous winding 
passages and curious niches, seats of stalagmite and draperies 
of stalactites, and cells and chambers and caverns and wells, 
can form perhaps some idea how a river falling down some 
fifty feet through such rocks — like the whorls of a shattered 
turbinated shell — would leap and wheel, and dash and toss, 
and somerset, and finally deliver itself in foam and spray 
at the bottom. 

Having finished this descent, and returned to the upper 
air, we crossed over to get a view of the town and the 
temples. It is from the brow of the ravine, on the other 
side, that we best command a view in which the natural and 
artificial — the new and the old — the modern and the an- 
cient — the useful and the agreeable and the beautiful — the 
romantic and the sublime — are blended in most striking 
combinations. 

The present grand cascade is a work of art, made by 
tunneling the travertine rock of the hill on the opposite side 
of the town, and turning the main stream through that 



128 THE TUNNEL. 

tunnel, from the mouth of which the river in one unbroken 
sheet, leaps about eighty feet to the head of the river below, 
and then winds round the town. The tunnel itself — it is in 
fact two parallel tunnels — is an exceedingly good specimen of 
engineering. I succeeded in getting so near to it as to look 
into its very throat. About one eighth of a mile across the 
arc of the ravine is a sort of terrace-causeway, or bridge, 
in full view of the falls. When the tunnel of the new falls 
was finished, and the water was to be let on, here was the 
central point of the celebration of so important an event. 
Mariano was there, and he gave me a graphic account of it. 
There were crowds of admiring spectators — the travellers — 
the high nobility — the officers of state — the diplomatic body, 
and the troops and the populace — all eyes bent in breathless 
and silent stare at the mouth of the tunnel, waiting to catch 
the first glimpse of the approaching experimental flood, and 
see it literally leap from the rock. It came, and in a twink- 
ling was dashed to pieces on the rocks below — thunders of 
artillery, and volleys of musketry, and the shouts of the 
people, and the harmonies of a grand Italian orchestra, 
mingling their various echoes all over the scene. 

I could not help stopping and falling into a long and quiet 
reverie as I called up such a spectacle, now twenty -five years 
passed away, and also studied the objects now in full view — 
the town, with its cluttered and dingy masses — the ruins of 
ancient villas, and bridges and cemeteries, first revealed by 
those recent changes — the modern villas in the bounds of the 
town, once spacious and beautiful, but now deserted and di- 
lapidated. To get another view, if possible still more beauti- 
ful, we followed the ravine more than half round the town. 
On the bank of the ravine, opposite the town, the road runs 
along its brow on the external curve — a little below the level 
of the town, which is on the inner curve. It is on the level 
of the town that the Anio enters it, and plunges into the ra- 



CASCATEIXES. 129 

vine and winds round the base of the town, while on that 
side a large portion of the water, instead of following the 
main steam of the cataract through the tunnel, runs in many 
streams down the green and inhabited hillsides, turning the 
wheels of many little mills and shops, and making, as it finds 
its way into the main stream at the base — charming little 
cascades — certainly not less than fifty, sparkling and twinkling 
in the sun, amid luxuriant shrubbery, and fig and olive trees, 
and cactuses, and gardens, and vineyards. These are the 
cascatelles of Tivoli — rendered more interesting by running 
through the ruins of Maecenas' villa, and beneath its broken 
arches to the main stream which winds beautifully at the 
base — at once the source and the receptacle of all these cas- 
catelles. From a position which takes in them all, as well as 
Rome and St. Peter's in the distance, and the intervening 
cultivated champaign, it is a scene never to be forgotten, 
even without its associations — but when Horace, and Catul- 
lus, and the magnificent Adrian — the great prisoner, the 
captured African, Syphax, who spent his last days here, and 
does not seem to have been misliked for his complexion 
— and Brutus and Cassius step into the scene, and people 
these suburban villas — who can fail for a while to be over- 
come with the associations and memories that crowd thick 
and fast upon him. 

Farewell to Tivoli — and back to Rome by the way we 
came, taking a second look at the same scenes and recalling 
with fresh interest the impressions that had been deepest en- 
graved on the memory. 

G* 



Cftaijhr fhttlj. 

PALACES — MUSEUMS ART. 

AS the Mons Vaticanus was in ancient times the place 
where the will of the gods of heathendom was 
manifested to those who sought it by vaticination, so it is 
now the the seat of Roman Catholic vaticination, in being 
the dwelling place of the so-called Vicar of Christ. The 
Vatican is but the collection of buildings on the Vatican 
Hill, occupied by the palace and the vast collections of the 
Pope. Other palaces have works of art — ancient and mod- 
ern — and collections of antiquities and objects of curiosity 
and vertu — there are museums at the capitol, at the Lateran 
Palace, and at the Quirinal Palace, and at the palace Bor- 
ghese, and the palaces of the nobles and millionaires of 
Rome — but all put together, they cannot come in compari- 
son with the collections of the Vatican. The Vatican — an 
immense pile of buildings, commenced more than one thou- 
sand years ago — and by irregular additions and improvements 
brought to what it is now — covers about twenty acres. 
It is a palace of about four thousand four hundred and forty- 



THE VATICAN MUSEUMS. 131 

two apartments, through which Art and Learning, and 
Religion, and Taste and Curiosity, may wander daily, for 
weeks and weeks in succession, and never tire, and come 
again and find it fresh and new as at the beginning. 

It has been a favorite and consistent policy of the popes to 
add to these wonderful collections. Pius VI. added two 
thousand statues during his pontificate. The long hall, or 
gallery of inscriptions, is a corridor perhaps fifteen feet 
wide, and one fifth of a mile long. It is broken up by mere 
arches thrown over it, into something like apartments. The 
walls of it on both sides, to about the height of convenient 
sight, are covered with original marbles and other stones, 
with the original inscriptions in Greek and Latin, from the 
earliest periods. There are three thousand of them, and, 
counting both sides of the hall, they extend nearly half a 
mile. Great numbers of these inscriptions are epitaphs of 
the early Christians, from the tombs in the catacombs — 
almost, if not quite all of which, I believe, have been re- 
moved to the Vatican. As the simpleton of Hierocles 
carried about a brick as a sample of the house he had to sell, 
so I have mentioned this more than one third of a mile of 
inscriptions in the Galleria Lapidaria, only to enable you to 
guess at the quantity of treasures of art and antiquity which 
may exist in another gallery, arranged by Pius VII., con- 
taining seven hundred ancient sculptures, in thirty compart- 
ments — not including another hall, two hundred and thirty 
feet long, built by the same pontiff, lighted from a roof 
sustained by ancient columns of the rarest beauty, and filled 
with the most interesting sculptures — in still another portion 
containing the contributions and collections of six popes — 
principally those of Clement XIV. and Pius VI. — constitu- 
ting by itself the most wonderful collection of antique 
Sculptures in the world — in the Hall of Animals — the 
Gallery of the Muses — the Circular Hall — the Hall of the 



132 THE LIBRARY. 

Greek Cross — the Hall of the Bigae — the Gallery of Stat- 
ues — the Hall of Busts — the Cabinet of the Masks — in the 
Etruscan Museum, founded by Gregory XVI., and occupy- 
ing eleven chambers — in the Egyptian Museum — the Gallery 
of the Candelabra, two hundred and seventy feet, long — 
the Gallery of Maps, five hundred feet long, in which the 
maps are painted on the wall in fresco — in the Tapestries ot 
Raphael — the Stanze of Raphael — ;in the Picture Gallery, 
containing not more than fifty pictures, yet these fifty, in 
the judgment of high ait critics, worth in merit all the pic- 
tures in the world beside — and in the Library. 

We went through all these, with only a look at the most- 
interesting objects. In the library, besides eighty thou- 
sand books, and twenty-four thousand manuscripts, are 
many exceedingly curious objects, relics of ancient art 
and ancient idolatry, in all ages of antiquity. There was 
a great urn, of malachite, presented to his Holiness by 
the Emperor of Russia — an object of great beauty and 
rarity, and of immense size. We were struck with a 
series of paintings, valuable, not for their merit as works 
of art, but for their subjects. They are historical paint- 
ings by modern Roman artists, of the principal scenes 
of the captivity and treatment of Pius VII. tinder the 
first Napoleon, and of his joyful restoration to his triple 
throne. The scenes of his sufferings, degradation, and 
humiliation, are as fully and as faithfully given as the jubi- 
lation of his triumphant return. This is characteristic of 
the Roman Catholic system. As they give all possible 
prominence to the ignominious treatment of the Savior, so 
do they to that of his servants, and most confidently do 
they believe that no machinations against the Pope can 
prosper in the end. Befoie I came to Rome I had been 
told by my Catholic acquaintances that we have only 
to wait and we shall find that the republican traitors to the 



GARDENS AND PALACES OF THE VATICAN. 133 

Pope in 1848-9, will come to an end perhaps as humilia- 
ting and retributive a? that of the great conqueror who 
imprisoned the Pope — who made his baby-boy not yet born, 
King of Rome — who was the usurper of the most Christian 
throne of France, of the Catholic throne of Spain, and, in- 
deed, of all the thrones that were necessary to give one to 
each of his family. Yet Pius VII. lived to see Napoleon die 
in ignominious captivity, and all his family driven into ob- 
scurity. How such things strengthen the faith of devoted 
Catholics, and the loyalty of those less devoted ! 

The gardens of the Vatican are also accessible from the 
Museum, and are finely laid out, and cultivated, and orna- 
mented with sculptures, which, were it not for those within 
the Museum, would be considered almost a museum. 

The Sistine Chapel, of which I have written in another 
letter, as the place of worship of the Papal family when in 
the Vatican palace, is also in itself a gallery of paintings. 
All its walls and ceilings are covered with the most elabo- 
rate paintings of historical and allegorical religious subjects, 
by Michael Angelo and other contemporaneous masters. 
The Chapel is, in this respect, a most interesting curiosity, 
but I did not see one painting, one scene, one figure, even, 
that excited in me the slightest feeling or emotion. I 
include the master-piece of Michael Angelo — the Last Judg- 
ment — which covers all one end of the Chapel, and to my 
mind demonstrates the folly of any human pencil attempting 
a subject so awful — it can never be fitly represented 
except by the pencil of the Almighty, to the unobscured 
vision of the human soul, in the actual revelations of the 
last scene of human destiny. 

His Holiness was residing at the Vatican palace, and his 
royal apartments there, were invisible to merely curious 
strangers. It is the law or etiquette of all crowned heads, 
that their palaces can be visited only when they are absent. 



134 ELECTION OP THF POPE. 

The Quirinal palace, so called from being on the Quiri- 
nal hill, called, also, the Pontifical palace, was, however, 
unoccupied by the Pope at the time, and we wandered 
through all the forty-eight rooms of that Papal residence. 
It has more interest because the conclave for the elec- 
tion of the Pope takes place in this palace, and the choice 
is announced from the balcony over the main entrance, to 
the people, who, in anxious crowds, are waiting to know 
who shall be their next Prophet, Priest, and King — Vicar 
of Christ — Head of the Church — Keeper of the keys of 
Heaven and Hell — and Holy Father. 

On the death of the Pope the Cardinals are shut up in 
one room — a bare room with benches, without partitions 
or curtains — shut in close on all sides except one outlet — no 
one is permitted to enter or speak to them, or send a mes- 
sage, or write to them, except one conclavist, or associate, 
selected by each cardinal. The little window through 
which their food is handed to them, was shown to us. For 
three days they are fed well, then if they have not agreed 
on a choice, they are reduced to one dish at noon, and one 
in the evening, for five days, and after that, only bread, and 
wine, and water, till the election takes place. So, even in 
so sacred and solemn a matter as choosing the Vicar of 
Christ, as well as in our jury-rooms, it seem that starvation, 
or short commons at least, is considered a great en- 
lightener of the mind and conscience. As soon as they 
have agreed, an established sign is made through the win- 
dow, to the outer world, and the bells are rung, and the 
great guns are shot, and Rome is happy. When the elec- 
tion is long delayed, and they get down to a short allowance 
of bread and water, they are said sometimes to have stormy 
times, and richly to deserve the name of the church mili- 
tant. As the choice must be made from the cardinals, it 
is said they have always an eye to the succession, and 



QUIRINAL PALACE. 185 

elect the oldest and weakest candidate, in the expectation, 
if not the desire, that he may soon be translated to the 
heavenly kingdom. This may have been so sometimes, in 
other times, but not now I fancy. The present Pope was 
neither old nor decrepit, but a hale and comparatively 
young man, when he was elected, and many Popes have 
reigned for long courses of years. In the days of Papal 
power and glory, in the days of Hildebrand and Montalto, 
the triple crown was something more than the bauble of the 
present day, and ambitious cardinals might fight for it, or 
cheat for it, as for the dominion of the world. They say 
that once after the election of a Pope, one of the cardinals 
whispered in his ear, " Well, you are elected Pope — listen 
while I tell you the last truth you will ever hear. Flatter- 
ed by those who will surround you, you will soon believe 
yourself a great man. But remember that, before your 
elevation, your were never anything but ignorant and obsti- 
nate. Good-by — I am now going to worship you." 

The Quirinal Palace does not exhibit in its apartments 
any special evidence of regal splendor, nor of sacerdotal 
mystery or magnificence. As a whole, the rooms showed a 
great variety of rich furniture and works of art, of taste, 
and of ornament — each room in its own style — including 
many valuable and curious presents from kings and princes. 
The chapel at the Quirinal does not compare at all with the 
Sistine at the Vatican Palace. We were somewhat sur- 
prised to find — as one of the regular rooms of the Vicar of 
Christ — a billiard room. We presumed it was for the use of 
his guests and servitors, rather than for himself. Yet Ave 
could not fail to consider it as good evidence that billiards 
is a canonical game. Speaking of guests reminds me that his 
Holiness never eats at the table with others — not even his 
guests, however distinguished — always at a table by himself 
and in another room — a fact which was quite new to me. 



13'j THE CAPITOL. 

It is a striking instance of many wherein he — who claims to 
be the Vicar of Christ — differs widely from his Lord and 
Master. He was not afraid to eat with publicans and 
sinners. 

The personal apartments of the Pope — his study, hall of 
audience, and bedroom — are of becoming simplicity, com- 
fort, and propriety. 

The gardens of the Quirinal are very large — a mile in 
circuit — with abundance of statues and fountains. There is 
an organ played by water, and the usual ornaments of a 
great and royal landscape garden — but nothing of special in- 
terest — nor does it display as much taste as precision, regu- 
larity, and stiffness. On the whole we were less interested 
in our visit at the Quirinal Palace than we expected to be. 
It is used by the Pope as a summer palace for its salubrity, 
being on high ground, and free from the miasmatic un- 
healthiness of the lower grounds of the Vatican. 

From the Quirinal Palace we passed to the Palace of the 
Capitol and its museum of art and antiquity, on the Capi- 
toline Hill. The ascent of its spacious and noble flight of 
steps in the open air is like going up a mountain, almost. 
At the foot are two Egyptian lionesses in basalt — at the top 
the colossal equestrian statue — ancient — of Castor and Pol- 
lux in Pentilic marble — a little further is that most beau- 
tiful of all equestrian statues, the gilt bronze statue of 
Marcus Aurelius on horseback — for hundreds of years known 
as the statue of Constantine, on the best of authority, and 
now, on better authority, as that of Marcus Aurelius — and 
if further inquiries should show it to be Caligula and his 
horse — newly elected Consul on their way to the capitol to- 
gether, for the horse to be sworn into office — we should 
only say the people had chosen certainly the best horse they 
could find. I cannot help feeling a little doubt as to 
these things, which have changed their names so often- 



MUSEUM OF THE CAPITOL. 137 

though I believe there is no reason to doubt the Marcus 
Aurelius — and, perhaps, the middle ages, saw as little to 
doubt that it was Constantine. It is so life-like and spirited, 
so beautiful in its pose and so majestic in its bearing and 
action, that one does not wonder that Michael Angelo 
exclaimed, when he first saw it, " It moves !" I could not 
imagine bronze so expressive. 

The square of the Capitol is one of the most imposing 
specimens of the architecture of Michael Angelo — and within 
the walls — besides the apartments devoted to the municipal 
government of Rome — are those containing various collec- 
tions and galleries which constitute the museum of the Capi- 
tol — in size and interest next to that of the Vatican, from 
which, however, it differs in its most striking characteristics 
and classifications. There is a museum of ancient architec- 
ture—another of statues and busts of great men of ancient 
Eome — another of eminent moderns — another of miscella- 
neous sculptures of great interest, including the real bronze 
wolf of the time of Cicero, with her immortal cubs tugging 
at her wild teats — the gallery of paintings, some two hun- 
dred of the choicest pictures of the various schools. There 
is a hall of imperial and consular inscriptions — another of 
ancient statues of the gods and the goddesses, and greater 
and lesser divinities — the hall of bronzes — the hall of the 
emperors — the hall of the dying gladiator, &c. , &c. Why 
should I thus run on with a mere catalogue of museums ? for 
each apartment is itself a museum sufficient to be the glory 
of any city but this capitol of ancient and modern art. 

The Lateran Palace also has a museum of great interest. 
The Academy of St. Luke — a society of artists, painters, 
sculptors and architects — have also in their collections many 
choice works, besides numerous portraits of artists of more 
or less fame. 

I have not ventured to criticise, even in general terms, 



138 THE GREAT MASTERS. 

the works of art — Painting, Sculpture, Architecture — which 
so overwhelm one here. We have at home so little opportu- 
nity to see the genuine productions of the great masters 
that we must all come into their presence, on our first visit 
to Europe, quite ignorant of their characteristic merits, but 
with general and undefined, but high expectations — and 
while our disposition is doubtless to fall in with the judg- 
ment and taste of the ages, quite easily, it is also true that 
our iconoclastic tendency and national vanity unite to give 
something of the feeling — " Is this all?" "Are these the 
old masters?" To appreciate these works as an artist, as 
a connoisseur, and as a virtuoso, requires training, study and 
observation, which I lack, and it is in one or the other of 
these characters — characters so widely different — that critics 
are most enthusiastic — not always just. The Duke of 
Wellington buys a genuine Murillo for five hundred guineas. 
Artists study it with rapturous and almost mysterious 
admiration of its manner and effect. Connoisseurs gloat 
over it, and point out to each other its beauties so pe- 
culiar to Murillo — and the virtuoso envies the hero of the 
Peninsular war more in his possession of that rare curiosity 
than in his military renown, and all these sigh to think that 
they cannot, by the offer of twice its cost, become its fortu- 
nate possessor. Under the influence of some unlucky star, 
it is demonstrated to be only an excellent copy made at a 
manufactory of old pictures at Antwerp — and the Iron 
Duke lays it a?ide, and artist and connoisseur and virtuoso, 
never care to look at the thing any more — yet it is the 
same thing, with the same real merit, all the while. So 
Michael Angelo intentionally entrapped the knowing ones 
of his day, who were constantly bepraising the then ancient 
sculptures as far beyond the reach of such moderns as he. 
He sculptured a Cupid, and broke oft* one of its arms and 
buried the statue in Rome, where they were about to dig for 



THE OLD MASTERS. 139 

works of art. It was found, and by the unanimous consent 
of connoisseurs was pronounced a work of ancient Greek 
art, and Cardinal St. George bought it for two hundred 
Roman crowns. Michael Angelo then produced the un- 
buried arm, to demonstrate that it was his work. The 
Roman connoisseurs, however, with a just taste, did not 
change their opinion of the statue — but of the artist — they 
did not hold the statue inferior, but they held the artist in 
superior estimation. Do not understand me as intending to 
intimate that the old masters are not the wonderful artists 
that they are uniformly held to be. They are so. No one 
can fail to see the evidence of great genius in their master- 
pieces — but I am quite certain that it is impossible to feel 
that real enthusiasm when looking at their works which 
their contemporaries were compelled to feel — for their works 
were addressed to, and were in sympathy with, the spirit 
and tastes of the age in which they lived and painted. They 
were not imitators or followers of an age then long past. 
They studied the whole past, but they painted for their 
present, and if one can in imagination transport himself 
back to those times, and surround himself with the groups 
of men and things, and the overpowering sympathies which 
surrounded and formed the painter, he must cease to wonder 
at the homage rendered to those men, for he will see them 
as they were seen by their own public — men of transcendent 
genius. There was the hiding of their power — that they 
painted for their own times — for the religion, the sympa- 
thies, the passions and the follies of their contemporaries. 
It was thus their works always found a ready sale. How 
suggestive this to modern artists ! Painting as a mere art 
is one thing — painting as a language is quite another thing. 
As an art, you admire its productions, as they conform to 
the rules of the art of which always an artist is the only 
expert and judge — as a language, you admire its produc- 



140 VILLA BORGHESE. 

tions, according to the intelligent discourse it holds with you. 
Of this you may be a much better judge than an artist. The 
many appreciate the subject — the few, the art — all appre- 
ciate the perfect union of the two. 

A drive out to the villa Borghese, a little way outside 
of the Porta del Popolo, brought us to one of the finest of 
the many modern Roman villas — embracing a varied and 
beautiful landscape, laid out and ornamented with great 
taste — and being some three miles in circuit. Its groves 
and its avenues — it shady walks and quiet recesses — groves, 
and clumps, ancl solitary shades of every kind of beautiful 
trees, and spots of shrubbery in infinite variety — and all in- 
spersed with beautiful little architectural erections, summer 
houses and bowers, and even buildings of considerable size, 
and the ground all peopled with statuary — have made it a 
great public promenade of Rome for all classes of citizens on 
their f.stal holidays. 

In the midst of this charming garden — of miles in extent 
— is the Casino, a great museum or temple of art — itself a 
building of great beauty in its architecture — having a ma- 
jestic portico — a saloon sixty feet long and fifty feet high, 
with the roof or ceiling finely painted in fresco, and seven 
or eight chambers or galleries filled with works of art and 
vertu — antiquities, and sculptures, and paintings of great 
merit. 

The villa Borghese was in the range of the guns in the 
principal cannonading, during the short life of the Roman 
Republic of 1848. The beautiful villa was much cut up 
by the shot that were fired into it from the Janicular Hill 
— where the batteries were planted that vainly endeavored 
to defend Republican Rome against Republican France. 
In those days we thought it fratricidal on the part of Louis 
Napoleon thus to destroy the hopes of Italian liberty, but 
we have now long ago learned that the republicanism of Na- 



ROMAN REPUBLIC. 



141 



poleon had really no kindred with freedom. It was only 
assumed, the more surely and completely to open his path 
to that despotism which was the master sentiment of the life 
of the first Napoleon, and is the sentiment to-day of the 
great nephew of his great uncle. Roman liberty fell before 
him that he might secure the favor of the Pope by restor- 
ing him to his dominions, and to his profane and secular 
throne. 

The Bonaparles never had any republicanism or love of 
liberty — any of them. It is only surprising that any one 
should suppose they had. They are constitutionally mon- 
archists of the clearest stamp. The two Napoleons have 
shown it in adversity as well as in prosperity. And 
Joseph whom we saw more nearly — while he resided with 
us — after the Bonapartian dynasty had been swept away with 
a destructive reverse, as sudden as it was overwhelming and 
complete, and they had all been returned to the private life 
from which good fortune took them, and were in prison or 
in exile — he, Joseph, at his plain home on the Delaware, 
— while all the world beside called him Joseph Bonaparte — 
was called in his family and by his friends, " Le Roi,'' the 
king, because for a few short days he had been, by main 
force, imposed upon Spain as her king. And the younger 
members of the family have everywhere, I believe, consid- 
ered themselves princes. Bonaparte overthrew the first 
French Republic, Bonaparte overthrew the Roman Republic, 
and Bonaparte overthrew the last French Republic. 

I talked a little with Mariano about the Roman Republic, 
as we saw the marks of the cannonading. He said there 
was no sympathy with the Republic among the Roman 
people. Order reigned in Rome, but it was the order 
of idle submissiveness to the actual state of things. The 
assassinations, and the flight of the Pope with which it 
began, shocked the superstition of the Romans, which was 



142 ROMAN REPUBLIC. 

heightened still more by the absolute invisibility of every 
priest and monk — every one of them considering his life in 
danger. Business was at a stand. No work, no wages — un- 
certain future, dangerous present, happy past — all combined 
to disgust them with the new state of things, which they 
considered vulgar and plebeian, if not impious and sacrile- 
gious. They sighed for the good old times, and when Pius 
IX. returned from Gaeta — to restore to Koine its former 
self — the universal Roman populace, intoxicated with joy 
unspeakable, rushed to meet their sovereign and their Holy 
Father, and with outstretched arms and gushing tears wel- 
comed him within the gates and crowded around him as his 
cavalcade moved slowly forward. Those who sigh for the 
regeneration of Italy and for the return of republicanism, I 
fancy are not the people but the patricians — not the many 
but the few — not those who desire to vote, but those who 
desire to be voted for — men of intelligence and letters, and 
the secular nobility. These latter classes — outside the 
priesthood and the government officials — I suppose to be 
very generally in favor of Italian freedom — but it will be 
long before they see it again. 

The Borghese family is one of the most distinguished, if 
not quite the most so of any in Rome. It was one of them 
whose marriage we attended the day after we arrived. It 
was to the Prince Borghese that the beautiful, sensual and 
heartless Pauline Bonaparte gave her hand, her person, and 
her contempt — and in the Casino or Mansion of the Villa 
Borghese is the beautiful Venus of Canova, for which Pau- 
line sat in puris naturalibus, — and when some one afterward 
asked her if such an exposure was not very uncomfortable, 
.she replied, " Oh, no ! the room was warm." The statue 
is worthy of the great genius of Canova and the great 
beauty of his model. The collection of ancient and modern 
works of art scattered through the various apartments, 



PRIVATE PALACES. 143 

though exceedingly interesting, still as a collection, large 
and excellent as it is, is much inferior to that of the palace 
of the same family — the Palace Borghese — which latter is 
one of the finest and richest collections in Rome. 

These private palaces of Rome, which are numerous, 
and of which we visited several, are simply very large and 
fine residences, and are a considerable feature of modern 
Rome. There is nothing very attractive in them except 
their size, their usually simple architecture, sometimes very 
classical and noble, and in some instances their museums of 
paintings and sculptures. Their collections are usually well 
arranged in several large rooms on the ground floor, each 
room furnished with a few seats and a catalogue of the 
paintings in that room, on a large card with a handle to it. 
A small douceur is always given to the custodian. This, 
doubtless, more than pays his wages. There are some fif- 
teen of these principal galleries in Rome. The celebrated 
Aurora of Guido, of which there are so many copies and 
engravings, is a fresco on the roof or ceiling of one of the 
halls of the Palace Rospigliosi. To prevent the tiresome, 
break-neck process of looking directly up to study so won- 
derful a production, there is an arrangement of mirrors 
now, by which a reflection of the painting is brought down 
to the horizontal line of sight, where it may be viewed with 
much more satisfaction by visitors, as well as by artist*, 
who are constantly there making copies, of which many are 
sold annually. Making good copies seems to be the princi 
pal labor of modern native painters in Rome, and of course 
art is dead. I visited some of the studios — more properly 
work-shops — of some of those copy-makers. I wonder that 
modern students of art, who go abroad to study, do not see, 
in this effect upon Roman art, a warning to them against 
devoting their time to copying the old masters and con- 
sidering that as studying their art. It. is doubtless well for 



144 COPYING PICTURES. 

a student to go abroad and study the works of great artists in 
every possible variety — but nothing sure can be worse than 
to set down and laboriously copy a picture — about as likely 
to make an artist as copying a fine poem would be to make 
a poet — not so much so, indeed. Let him study the finest 
works, with the deepest attention, simply by looking at 
them — not a palette or pencil in hand — to fill his mind 
with forms of beauty and truth, with images and combina- 
tions, and effects as they have been produced by those 
wonderful masters, and thus he will find himself cultivated 
indeed. Let him study nature — not to make mere por- 
traits of her imperfect productions — but to discover those 
bits of perfection that are found in her handiwork, and 
treasure them up in his inner soul — filling it with all forms 
and elements of beauty — to be recombined and reproduced 
by his own cultivated genius in new combinations, whose 
merit shall be that they are more true to Nature than Nature 
is to herself. Thus, with new and abundant resources, his 
enthusiasm kindled, his genius awakened, and his ambition 
looking upward and forward, he can say, " And I am also 
a painter" — not a mannerized plagiarist of other men's 
merits. 



THE RUINS OF ROME. 

THE ruins of Rome, while they are deeply interesting to 
those who are able, by the aid of imagination and 
the lights of history, to restore them, I think, nevertheless, 
fail to come up to the expectations of any, and to those 
who know not what to expect, or what the ancients were, 
the disappointment must be great. Still it is not quite cer- 
tain but the lack of knowledge may tend to increase the 
interest, for the reason that the imagination has wider range, 
as in the case of Etruscan antiquities — of Stonehenge and 
other Cyclopean orDruiclical ruins — or of those of Palenque, 
and Copan, and the other ruined cities of Central America, 
which, in imagination, we may restore, and people, and 
invest with such variety of purpose as association may 
suggest. 

From any good elevated position, it is quite easy to dis- 
tinguish the seven hills on which ancient Home was built — 
and there are numerous other hills — some thirty in all — 
within the walls. They hardly deserve the name of hills, 
being but the large knolls of an undulating surface. Many 

7 



146 RUINS OF ROME. 

of them are, doubtless, heaps of ruins, covered by modern 
houses, and if excavated would disclose choice treasures of 
ancient art. Much of the site of ancient Rome — two 
thirds within the walls — is now a desert, marked only by 
the scattered ruins, which antiquaries have been able to 
name with reasonable certainty. 

In the heart of the modern city — which is built as com- 
pactly as any city — are found some of the best preserved 
and most striking ruins of the Romans. Many stand shat- 
tered, and decayed, and half buried in the earth, while the 
Church has appropriated others to her sacred purposes, sim- 
ply changing the name. To many this seems almost pro- 
fanity. They shudder almost at the thought of taking a 
statue of a heathen god, and calling it the statue of the 
highest saint in the calendar — and bowing down to it and 
kissing its foot. I believe it is not doubted that an ancient 
statue of Jupiter was, by modern faith, converted into the 
statue of the Jew Peter, which has had its toes almost 
kissed off in St. Peter's. But is there anything wrong in it ? 
Do we object to modern priests preaching the Gospel in the 
Coliseum — in ancient times the Flavian Amphitheatre — are 
we at all shocked that the glorious Pantheon is now a tem- 
ple to the true God % Antiquaries are in doubt whether 
that interesting church St. Stephen Rotundo, was a temple 
to Faunus, or to Bacchus, or a market, or an arsenal — does 
it make any difference which ? and the Pinakotheca of the 
Baths of Diocletian constitutes one of the most beautiful 
portions of the celebrated church of St. Mary of the Angels, 
— and so on, in numerous other instances. It would natur- 
ally be so when the early Christians adopted the policy — if 
that is the proper word — of commending the new religion 
by pointing out and enforcing its analogies to the ancient 
superstitions. Paul was never all things to all men more 
than when at Athens he insisted that their altar " to the 



FORUMS THEATRES. 147 

unknown God" was really an altar to the God whom ho 
preached, and that they — although ignorantly — were fellow 
worshippers with him of the same living and true God. 

The ruins of Forums — when they are distinguishable, 
like those of the .Roman Forum and Trajan's Forum — are 
wonderfully suggestive — so of temples of the ancient idola- 
try, which in a city and among a people like the Romans, 
exceedingly superstitious, could not but be abundant and in 
every variety — so of the palaces of the great and the rich 
in a city so opulent and luxurious as Rome — so of the 
theatres and places of amusement of a people so addicted to 
spectacles and representations. Of all these there are sug- 
gestive remains which no one would expect to find enumer- 
ated in a traveller's letter. 

The Coliseum — of which all have seen pictures, and none 
except those who have looked at the ruin itself, have any 
proper idea — could seat ninety thousand spectators, each 
one of whom had a clear view of the arena, and of the fights 
of gladiators with each other and with wild beasts. When 
it was dedicated five thousand wild beasts were victimized 
in savage sport. It covers six acres, and is one hundred and 
fifty-seven feet high. We plucked a few plants among the 
stupendous ruins — the whole number of species found there 
is two hundred and sixty. For two hundred years its 
mighty walls supplied building-stone for the palaces of the 
city, and yet it remains in its grandeur. The Circus Maxi- 
mus, now buried and obliterated, would seat two hundred 
thousand persons, and its arena, of near half a mile in 
length, gave noble scope for chariot races — once round the 
circuit of the seats was a walk of only a few feet less than a 
mile I have thus noticed these large places of amusement 
only to give a sort of idea of that ancient people in this re- 
spect. Smaller theatres and amphitheatres abounded also. 
The smallest — the Theatre of Balbus — would seat eleven 
thousand and five hundred. 



148 ANCIENT PALACES WEALTH. 

The palaces may not all be judged by the Palace of the 
Caesars, but the voluptuousness of the people may well be 
inferred from it — it cast even the Temple of Solomon into 
the shade. Its affluence of precious marbles, and ivory, and 
golds, and diamonds, was beyond all parallel — all that art and 
wealth and luxury could do Nero caused to be done, as he 
said, that he might have a place where he could live like a 
man. The number of its chambers and halls was almost 
uncounted, and one of them — disclosed by digging a hundred 
years and more ago — was one hundred and thirty-eight feet 
by ninety-one. There was a portico three thousand feet 
long, and with three rows of columns — what a colonnade ! — 
and its vestibule was not less remarkable, while before it 
stood a statue in bronze of Nero himself, by the first artist 
of his day. It was a colossus, of one hundred and twenty 
feet high. 

The wealth of these old Romans was inconceivable. 
Seneca — the modest moralist — was worth seventeen millions 
of dollars. Tiberius was worth one hundred and twenty 
millions. Mark Anthony's house was sold for two millions. 
Otho spent five millions in finishing a wing of Nero's Palace 
— one of Caligula's dinners cost three hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars — Heliogabalus' breakfast for a few friends, 
cost one hundred thousand dollars. The villa of Scaurus 
was burned up. His loss was five and a half millions of 
dollars. He was not insured, but, I believe, the loss did 
not effect his pecuniary credit, because he was known to be 
well able to lose that amount. Wherever you go in and 
about Rome and for miles around, ancient ruins are con- 
stantly presenting themselves. The wonderful aqueducts 
and roads stretching from city to city, and from province to 
province, are their most remarkable utilitarian works, and 
they are really worthy of the Empire. 

Of the state of ancient art you may well judge, by the 



RELICS OF ANCIENT ART. 149 

museums of the Capitol and the Vatican — where statues, 
and sculptures, and sarcophagi, and inscriptions, dug from 
the heaps of disintegrated marbles of crumbled palaces and 
temples, are beyond computation — some of the sculptures 
are in porphyry, polished to the brightness of a mirror, as 
though they were finished but yesterday — quite as beautiful 
as the classical productions in marble. In the museum of 
the Vatican, everything is collected that can illustrate an- 
tiquity. Every Pope adds a new chamber or so to the 
museum, and fills it with what has been discovered or 
collected during his reign — and his inscription is duly 
recorded, in letters of gold, over the arches through which 
you enter his contributions. Each Pope, I beli eve, takes 
occasion thus to immortalize his pontificate, leaving some 
worthy work, somewhere in and about Rome, of permanent 
value, to tell to the ages which shall succeed him, that he 
was not unmindful of their good opinion. 

Of all the ruins of Rome, none are more striking, as 
exhibiting the useful public works of that great people, than 
their roads, their sewers, and their aqueducts. 

From the city, in every direction, ran these great public 
roads — to immense distances. The state of the world, and 
of the engineering arts being considered, it seems to me that 
the public roads of ancient Rome are quite as remarkable 
as the railways of modern times. Some thirty of these 
roads connected Rome with the surrounding regions. From 
the Forum, at Rome, they radiated to the frontiers of the 
empire. The Appian Way was the most remarkable — ex- 
tending from Rome to Naples, thence to Brundusium — 
three hundred and sixty miles long. It was paved all the 
way with hard lava-stones, and it had an elevated side- 
walk. The road is now but here and there revealed — where 
it is, the lava pavement, almost as hard as cast iron, is 
worn with deep ruts by the great number of wheels which 



150 ROADS AQUEDUCTS. 

passed over it. Whenever there is any attempt to explore 
it, a little digging — sometimes eight or ten feet deep — re- 
veals the old paved road bed. These roads were as nearly 
straight and level as possible — and were made by first a 
layer of stones in cement — then a layer of gravel, then the 
solid and carefully laid pavement. Curb-stones divided the 
sidewalk from the carriage way, and mile-stones marked the 
distance from the Capitol. What an immense system of 
internal improvements for inter-communication! built and 
kept up at what immense expense, when at every five or 
six miles, were public buildings, each supplied with relays 
of forty horses — that expresses might be sent with almost 
race-horse rapidity ! 

The aqueducts, whose tottering piers and broken arches 
stretch in such long lines across the Campagna, brought 
wholesome water to the imperial city, in solid and beautiful 
masonry, from the great distances of thirty, forty, and even 
fifty miles. The aqueducts were numerous, bringing the 
water from various springs — some supplying one portion of 
Rome, and some another. The oldest of these are two 
thousand four hundred years old. When they passed 
under ground, as they did for many portions of their route, 
they were not arched canals, but the top was corered with 
immense blocks of stone, which supported the superincum- 
bent earth. Most of them have fallen into cureless ruin, 
but large portions of them show still what immense works 
of utility they were. Only three, I believe, now actually 
bring to Rome the excellent water which she enjoys, and 
supply the many public fountains, which beautify the 
various public places — spouting from interesting allegorical 
sculptures, and falling into beautiful basins of great size, or 
thrown up into beautiful jets of stream and spray, some- 
times to the height of sixty or seventy feet. 

The sewerage of ancient Rome might be well imitated by 
many a modern city. 



SEWERS COLUMNS. 151 

The Cloaca maxima — the grand trunk sewer, now five-and- 
twenty hundred years old — still vomits its filthy stream into 
the Tiber from its cavernous mouth, so large, as Strabo 
says, that a wagon load of hay might be driven through it. 
It was more than thirteen feet square within, and diminished 
to about ten feet square at its mouth, where, also, was a 
more rapid descent, that by a contracted and rapid current 
it might be more surely cleared, when the rains should be 
added to the usual supply of drainage. Eight hundred 
years after it was built, Pliny wondered that it had lasted so 
long, exposed, as it had been, to earthquakes and other casu- 
alties — and when you see it now, you wonder why it should 
not last forever — till the last earthquake shall break up old 
marble — for it is built of three concentric courses of blocks 
of peperino, five feet by three. It is, like all Etruscan 
walls, without cement. 

Near the commencement of this grand concentration of 
filth, is a pure little spring of the sweetest water, pure and 
limpid — so extremes meet — we did not taste it — and a little 
further on is another, and a larger one, which is now used 
as a public washing place. 

These immense works for public worship, public amuse- 
ment, public utility, and public ornament, which cannot be 
enumerated, of the finest architecture, and of the severest 
workmanship and finish, and sculptures in infinite variety, 
give us some idea of the great amount of cultivated and in- 
telligent industry which characterized the social system of 
those old masters of the world. 

The columns and obelisks which now ornament the public 
places — some of which are but noble specimens preserved 
from the great colonnades or monuments of antiquity on the 
spot, and others have been transported from abroad — are 
other striking objects among the ruins of Rome. The An- 
tonine Column and the column of Trajan, and the column 



152 OBELISKS. 

of the Virgin, are justly the most celebrated — this latter, in 
front of Santa Maria Maggiore, was taken from the basilica 
of Constantine, whence it is said to have been brought from 
some earlier temple. It is a beautiful Corinthian Column 
of white marble, surmounted by a statue of the Virgin. 
It is not of ancient Rome — but the column of Trajan and 
that of Antonine copied from it, are more than seventeen 
hundred years old. That of Trajan is in the Forum of 
Trajan, and is the most remarkable column in the world — 
the shaft, one hundred feet high, of white marble, is hollow, 
and through the centre, by a staircase, you mount to the 
top. Its outer surface is its greatest wonder, for thereon, 
in a spiral band, from the base to the capital, is sculptured 
in great detail the military history of the reign of Trajan. 
The sculptures are in fine preservation, and are an exceed- 
ingly valuable study of costume and military art. From the 
rude bridge of boats in which he crossed the Danube, to 
his reception of ambassadors suing for peace, the inter- 
esting scenes of his campaigns are given with matchless 
skill — embracing twenty-five hundred human figures, and 
the necessary horses and fortresses and battles. What a 
laborious and beautiful — almost sublime — trophied monu- 
ment ! It is now surmounted by a statue of St. Peter. 
The Antonine, like all copies and imitations, is not equal to 
the original. 

The obelisks can hardly be classed with the ruins of 
Rome — having been brought by the emperors from Egypt, 
as antiquities, to ornament the city. They are Egyptian, 
and not Roman — trophies brought by Pagan Rome from the 
more ancient and idolatrous empire of the Pharaohs. 
Modern Christian Popes, commencing with that great man, 
Sixtus V., less than three hundred years ago, have reared 
them anew, as proper ornaments of a Christian city — as 
they are. They are not uninteresting as mere mementoes 



ARCHES. 153 

of the triumphs and progress of the Christian religion. 
There are eleven of them in the various public places, all of 
red Egyptian granite, and most of them covered with his- 
torical hieroglyphics — some of them going back to the time 
of Moses. They vary in height from thirty to one hundred 
and fifty feet. The obelisk of St. John Lateran is estimated 
to weigh four hundred and forty-five tons — that of St. 
Peter's, still more. This latter was raised to its present 
place by one hundred and forty horses, six hundred men, and 
forty-six cranes. 

Our wonder is perhaps unduly excited when we see these 
marbles and columns and obelisks from Africa and Asia — 
from Greece and Egypt and Constantinople — that have been 
brought here entire, to ornament the churches and altars, 
and public places of this city of the Consuls, the Tribunes, 
the Kings, the Emperors and the Popes of three thousand 
years. We are ourselves so far from these places, and our 
own green forest land is so fresh and new, that we do not 
without reflection, realize that Rome is comparatively 
near to them. A few days sail was all of time that was 
required for their transportation, but vessels were required 
of a peculiar construction. One was transported in a vessel 
of three hundred oars — a large row boat — from Alexandria. 
All the great structures of antiquity, the Tower of Babel, the 
massive sculptures of Nineveh, the pyramids, the tombs, and 
the temples of Egypt and Arabia, seem to show that the an- 
cients had engineering expedients and contrivances which 
— if not like our own — were of as great compass and 
efficiency. 

The half dozen monumental and triumphal arches, which 
have been tolerably preserved during all the troubles of 
Rome, are well counted among the best memorials of the 
proudest days of Roman grandeur. The arch of Constan- 
tine, the arch of Septimius Severus, and the arch pf Titus, 

7* 



154 THR MAMERTTNE PRISON. 

are unsurpassed in interest by any ruins in Rome. They are 
covered with sculptures and inscriptions. Those on the 
arch of Titus represent the taking of Jerusalem by that 
emperor and the procession of the triumph bearing the 
spoils of the sacred temple, including the golden table, th£ 
silver trumpets, and that massive golden candlestick, with 
its seven branches — between five and six feet high — winch 
was so conspicuous as a reality in the temple itself, and 
as a prophetic emblem in the figurative and sublime ec- 
stacy of the Apocalypse. The arch of Constantine, 
strange as it may seem, is still of doubtful origin. Some 
suppose it to have been built by Constantine — others, 
with more positiveness, and perhaps, probability, insist that 
it was was built by Trajan and decorated with sculptures of 
ancient Jewish style and taste, and that Constantine only 
appropriated it to himself, gave it its name, and added the 
unclassical sculptures and scenes which belong to his own 
history, and are easily distinguished by their inferiority from 
the original sculptures. 

I cannot pass without a word the Mamertine Prison — a 
massive subterranean Etruscan dungeon — 

41 'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome." 

To it we descended, that we might procure, by actual 
observation, a correct view of this celebrated state prison 
of antiquity — for it is now, I believe, conceded that it was a 
state prison and not a place for vulgar criminals. Amid its 
terrible filth and darkness Jugurtha was starved to death — 
the accomplices of Catiline were strangled — and Sejanus 
and Pleminius were slaughtered. Here, too, it is said, St. 
Peter was confined. The Church has, of course, given it a 
distinguished place among the sacred footprints of her patron 
saint. They show us the pillar where he was bound, and 
we drank from the beautiful limpid little spring that reflects 



STATE PKISON OF ANCIENT ROME. 155 

the dark shadows of that dungeon and which the Church 
says sprang up miraculously and mercifully while the Apostle 
was there, to enable him to baptize his jailors — not the jailor 
and his household of the New Testament, which was at anoth- 
er time and place — but Processus and Martinian, who were 
his custodians in this dungeon. Our Baptist brethren, I am 
sure, will never believe the tradition, for the little fountain 
is hardly large enough to immerse a baby in. 

This dungeon of ancient Rome consists of two chambers, 
one below another. The upper one — twenty-five feet long, 
eighteen wide, and thirteen high — is now reached by a de- 
scending modern flight of twenty-eight steps, through which 
one may now descend more easily than did the noble wretches 
who entered it as a living grave. Anciently it was entered — 
as the lower one now is — by a small aperture, the pris- 
oners being let down, by a cord, through its two-story 
depths. The lower dungeon is but eighteen feet long by 
nine wide, and six high. You enter it by a small hole in the 
top. The steps or stairs by which you reached the first 
were called the scalce gcmonice — the stairway of groans — from 
the groans of those who, as they passed to the prison, saw 
at the head of the stairs, the stone bridge from which — 
when death should end their sufferings — their emaciated and 
sickly bodies should be thrown into the Tiber, in sight of 
the Forum, as a terror to the people. 

It has been sometimes said that the ruins of Rome are 
interesting not because they represent, but because they sug- 
gest, what they have been, and that, therefore, pictures, and 
prints, and drawings of them may be as interesting, because 
as suggestive, as the real ruins — but on the spot we soon 
learn otherwise. I take pleasure, in my room, in looking at 
prints of the ruins, but when I stand beside, beneath, above, 
and among the real works of that wonderful people, moul- 
dering still before my eyes now, as they have been all 



156 RUINS OF ROME. 

along for two thousand and five hundred years, everywhere 
disclosing that powerful and cultivated Roman intellect 
which subdued, and overran the world, and everywhere sug- 
gesting their great productions of word and deed, in art and 
in action, as well as in letters, I am lost in the reveries that 
seem to entrance the senses, and even with my imperfect 
knowledge, I raise the dead, I restore the architecture, and 
the public works, and works of art, and I see, as it were in 
the dusky sky of the past, a mirage of ancient Home, in her 
power, in her glory, and in her extent. 



ROMAN RELIGION. 

THE people are more religious — in their way — here 
than anywhere else where we have been, and carry 
their religion into the midst of their business In almost 
every shop, from that of the humblest cobbler up, is a little 
shrine — a crucifix or a statue of the Virgin — and a perpet- 
ual light burning before it. There is hardly a church — nu 
merous as they are — in which, whenever you enter, no matter 
at what hour, you do not find devout worshippers, of the 
various classes of citizens, performing their devotions, ap- 
parently unconscious of any presence but their own. The 
poor mother brings her babe in her arms, and before it can 
lisp or go alone, teaches it to respect sacred objects and to 
imitate her acts of religion. Crosses are everywhere — they 
are wrought in the stucco of the walls, at the corners of the 
streets. The mother in low life, with her babe in her arms, 
goes up to one of these crosses and teaches the little babe 
to kiss it. The same care is seen, too, in teaching them, 
while they are still babies, to cross themselves and to per- 



158 ROMAN RELIGION. 

form the other little acts of religion practised by devout 
Catholics. 

It is of course to be expected that here, in the Capital of 
the Roman Catholic Church, is seen the Roman Catholic 
religion in its most truthful and various manifestations. It 
is the fashion, I find, for most Protestants to say that here 
they are confirmed in their antipathy to that church — that 
here they see so much of the idleness and looseness of the 
Roman Priests and monks — so much of the mummeries of 
their formal religion — so much of the ignorance and vice 
and beggary of the populace — so much of their absurd 
superstitions, their unworthy miracles and manufactured 
traditions, and so much of their bigotry and intolerance, 
that they really are compelled to look with disgust and 
hatred upon what they before only disbelieved and disliked. 
Not so I. Perhaps the rapidity of my movements and of 
my observations, may have saved me from such impressions, 
for my mind has been opened to light from so many quarters, 
that I look upon the Catholic system with more charity 
than before, though I was never intolerant or bitter against 
it. I do not believe any more in its formalism and cere- 
mony, or any less in the purity, simplicity and spiritual- 
ity of the Protestant faith and worship than before. The 
winking Madonnas — the liquefactions of blood — the fab- 
ricated miracles and relics — the portraits painted' by 
St. Luke, etc., etc., are to my mind as ridiculous in some 
cases, and as blasphemous in others, as they ever were. 
And that adulterous union of Church and State, which 
has produced that Roman government, which sits like 
the curse of God upon the beautiful Italian peninsula — I 
am more and more convinced that it is that, and not the 
Roman Catholic Church, that is described with such terrible 
words and such fearful emphasis in the Apocalypse. But 
these are not the Catholic religion. They are not parts of 



ROMAN RELIGION. 159 

it, although they exist in connection with it, and may be 
said to be parasites of it.* It was forced upon me from day 
to day by what I saw and heard, that even in these points 
to which I have alluded, in these accompaniments of that 
religion and in analogous matters, there is less difference 
than is sometimes supposed between it and the Protestant 
denominations. The fundamental characteristics of the 
Roman religion are what all agree to be the highest graces 
of Christian excellence — faith — obedience — gloiy in the 
Cross of Christ. It is the exaggeration and excess of 
these which offend us — they have too much, of what we 
have, perhaps, too little. Their faith runs into the weak- 
est credulity and the grossest superstition — their obedience 
into abject submission and surrender of conscience which 
makes a tyrannical and oppressive, and sometimes unscru- 
pulous priesthood — and their glory in the Cross of Christ 
into an infinite and constant exhibition of the material 
scenes of Calvary and the worship of the mother who bore 
Him and the saints who witnessed his death. The differ- 
ence is less in kind and quality than in quantity. We all 
have traditions, we all have miracles, we all have pious 
frauds, we all have superstitions, we all have idle priests and 
useless devotees, and the wicked and the ignorant, in the 
church and at the altar. We all have forms and ceremonies, 
and commandments of men and traditions of the elders, 
only less, much less, than they — as much difference perhaps 
in quantity, and possibly no more in quality, than between 
a beam and a mote, either of which, in the eye, would ob- 
struct the vision. That these do not constitute the Catholic 
religion, and are not part of it, is quite apparent, because 
one may disbelieve them all and still be sound in the 
faith. 

The cassock and surcingle — the gown, and band, and sur- 
plice, and mitre, and crozier are all inventions of men, as 



160 ROMAN RELIGION. 

much as the chasuble and other articles of priestly robing, 
which are peculiar to the Roman Catholic priests. The 
bowing at the name of Jesus, how does it differ from bowing 
and kneeling when you pass his image 1 Signing the sign 
of the cross upon the forehead of an infant in its baptism, 
wherein does it differ from signing the same sign on your 
own forehead on entering into the sacred temples of the 
Lord ? And a crumb of bread and a sip of wine, how is it a 
supper any more than a wafer made of flour and wine % 
Could all the multitudinous seas of physical earthly water 
wash out one sin from the guilty soul % Baptism is but a 
sign, then why is it more baptism to plunge the body in the 
water than to sprinkle it with the crystal drops ! Is not 
the mode of baptism as traditional as the sprinkling with 
holy water, and keeping Sunday as keeping Christmas % In 
rites and ceremonies, too, the difference is in quantity and 
not in kind. In fasts and festivals, and saints and saints'- 
days, still it is in number in which the most of the difference 
lies. In the offices of the church, in those who serve in the 
ministrations of religion and in grades of priests, and orders 
of hierarchical dignitaries and in titles, it is still the number 
and quantity that cause us to differ. I say ** us" by 
which I refer to all the classes of Christians who set up for 
themselves some exclusive privilege, by virtue of divinely 
appointed orders, ceremonies, successions, and privileges. 

Some have stopped at one point and some at another in 
the chain of development, and some have branched off in 
one direction and some in another, as the inevitable law of 
ecclesiastical order has made systems of church organiza- 
tion and sacerdotal power, always to conform nearer and 
nearer to the characteristic forms and principles of the 
government of the state and the popular sympathies. In 
despotic countries the church naturally finds itself officered 
and ornamented with all the grades of supremacy, termina- 



KOMAN RELIGION. 161 

ting in the Pope as God's vicegerent — the vicar of Christ, the 
Keeper of the keys of Heaven and Hell. In a pure democ- 
racy we find the other extreme in Congregationalism with- 
out hierarchy, or officers, or titles — the people the actual 
constituency of the office bearers of the church. Between 
these two extremes are the great variety of denominations 
approaching more or less nearly to one or the other of these 
extremes. Each is quite sure that his is according to the 
Bible pattern, and that if so, then of course all the others are 
not — quite forgetting that Scripture and tradition alike 
indicate a similar diversity from the beginning and spring- 
ing from a similar cause, the fact that ecclesiastial order and 
ritual — not of the substance of religion under the Jewish 
system — under the New Dispensation are everywhere the 
production of human wisdom and human notions of expe- 
diency applied to that subject. 

The Bishop of Rome, in my judgment, is quite as divinely 
appointed as the Bishop of London, or the Bishop of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, or the thousands of Bishops 
of the Presbyterian churches — and not a whit more so. 
And the Pope and his Cardinals are quite as " regular" as 
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bench of Bishops in 
England. 

The spirit of religion — that by which our lot is appointed 
hereafter — is entirely independent of and separate from all this 
■ — and is and must be the same everywhere, and everywhere it 
is fruitful in Christian charity. The two great Dispensations 
are two great divinely appointed diversities, appointed to teach 
us, among other things, that different times, and places, and 
circumstances, and people, require different systems of 
ecclesiastical order. While I cannot conform to the Eoman 
Catholic system, I shall not presume to denounce it for its 
imitation of the Mosaic forms. When I read of the tabernacle 
in the wilderness — the travelling church of the chosen peo- 



162 THE TABERNACLE EN' THE WILDERNESS. 

pie as they wandered, by divine guidance, through the 
deserts of Asia — with its vail and flowing curtains of blue, 
and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, embroidered 
with cherubims, and coupled with gold, and its ramskins died 
red, and badger skins, and lights, and spices, and incense- — 
with its mercy seat and cherubims of pure beaten gold, and 
the ark, and its tables with their golden crowns, and the 
golden candlesticks, with shaft, and branches, and bowls 
like almonds, and knops, and flowers all of pure gold — and 
the embroidered hangings — for the doors of the tent — fast- 
ened by hooks of gold to lofty pillars overlaid with gold, and 
standing in sockets of brass, and the sacred vestments of the 
priest, the ephod of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine 
twined linen — each color embroidered with gold — the girdle 
and the shoulder-pieces, and the breast-plate sparkling with 
all the known varieties of precious stones — set in ouches of 
gold, and hung with wreathen chains of gold, and tied with 
rich blue laces — the skirt or robe on its ample and flowing 
hem bordered with alternating embroidery and ornaments of 
gold — a golden bell and a pomegranate, wrought in with 
curious needle work — and the consecrated vessels — all done as 
the Lord had commanded, as it was shown to Moses on the 
mount — and the striking and complicated symbolical ritual, 
laid out in all its minutest details by the hand of God him- 
self — when I see all this, how shall I say that all the 
appointments of the sanctuary may not properly be beautiful 
and expensive, gorgeous even, and luxurious? 

And when, five hundred years later, the man after God's 
own heart, unable, himself, by reason of harassing wars, to 
build a fitting temple to Jehovah, still laid aside the un- 
told millions of treasure which were necessary — he died 
worth four thousand millions of dollars — and left the wealth 
aud the duty to Solomon his son, who, endowed with a 
supernatural portion of the Divine "Wisdom, and the Divine 



THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM. 163 

favor, built that most wonderful of buildings, the Temple at 
Jerusalem, whose cost who can compute % whose gorgeous glo- 
ry who can picture ? whose carvings and sculptures,of infinite 
variety, in precious woods, and costly stones, and solid gold, 
who can enumerate? whose sacred vessels, and implements, 
who can number 1* and all this for the centralization and 
exhibition of a ceremonial and a priesthood, every way in 
harmony with such a temple, — how shall I presume to say 
that the most magnificent of Roman Catholic churches are 
not fitly ornamented for the honor of God, and how shall I 
dare to say that the ceremonies, the ritual, and the vestments 
of the Roman church are mummeries — or ridiculous, or ab- 
surd 1 How can I say that such a service is not acceptable 
to Him who drew the pattern in the Mount ? I believe 
that by the Gospel Dispensation, these forms and ceremo- 
nies were intended to give place to the simpler worship 
which seems to me to be everywhere taught in the New 
Testament — but where shall I find the Divine ordinance or 
decree, or the positive inculcation of the Savior, sweeping 
away the ceremonial observances, and striking worship of 
the Jews ? 

No one, at all informed on the subject, can fail to see 
everywhere in Rome, the evidence that the wdiole Roman 
system is a distant but distinctly visible imitation and ex- 
aggeration of the temples, the altars, the sacrifices, the 
priests and Levites, and the rites and ceremonies of the 
ancient Jewish religion, with that mixture of heathenism 
which was tolerated at the beginning, to make the new 
religion acceptable to the heathen nations. And the prac- 
tical waiving of all conformity to the Jewish ceremonial, 

*It is said the service of the Temple contained one hundred and eighty thousand 
cups, thirty thousand candlesticks, one hundred and sixty platters, two hundred 
thousand vials, one hundred and sixty thousand pots, one hundred and seventy 
thousand censers, sixty thousand measures, four hundred thousand instruments of 
music. 



164 NON-CONFORMITY. 

on the part of the heathen converts, which is so conspicu- 
ous in the Sacred Scriptures, under both Dispensations — 
what a commentary it is upon inflexible ecclesiastical order 
and ritual. The men who "feared God" from every na- 
tion under Heaven — the " devout" men and women so 
often spoken of — the " proselytes," the " stranger within the 
gates," were converts to the true God, who lived in good 
fellowship with the Jews, but disregarded the Mosaic ritual. 
To these non-conformists was special honor given by Prov- 
idence. To them it was given to perform the last rites to 
the first martyr Stephen, and to weep over his remains — 
and Cornelius, and Justus, and Lydia, were of this class. 
It is well to notice some simple incidents in the sacred 
scriptures of which the Roman Catholic Church has made 
important use in its characteristic practices. — That Naaman, 
the Syrian, asked the prophet for two mules burden of Jew- 
ish earth, is perhaps a sufficient warrant for Archbishop 
Ubaldo to bring fifty-eight ship-loads of earth from Mount 
Calvary to make a sacred burying-ground. — The whole of 
their wonderful system of sacred relics of miraculous power, 
is a not unnatural exaggeration and abuse of the single 
instance of the bones of the prophet Elisha restoring a dead 
man to life. — That Micah, on Mount Ephraim, invited a 
young man to be "a father and a priest," and consecrated 
him, was perhaps an example which suggested the calling 
all their priests by the affectionate and sacred title of 
Father. — In the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, grateful 
kings and prophets, and captains, dedicated offerings to God 
out of the spoils won in battle, which were preserved in 
the temple, and hence, perhaps, it is that the shrines of the 
saints and the altars of the churches are clustered round 
with rich gifts and votive offerings, dedicated by the faith- 
ful, and hung up as conspicuous trophies — The Labarum 
may well have been suggested by the misapplied prophetic 



CHRISTIAN ODDITIES AND MEMORIALS. 165 

declaration, " Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man 
in Heaven." — The Master sent out the Seventy in humility 
and poverty, as the preachers of his Gospel, and hence have 
come the Seventy Cardinals, who, clothed in scarlet, in 
gorgeous equipages, roll through the streets of Eome, the 
electors and the grand council of the Pope, or as secular 
rulers wield the civil power in the Roman Legations. 

I have often thought of the sensations of a devout and 
intelligent Koman Catholic, even from our less supei-stitious 
Western world, when he visits Rome — he sees so much at 
every turn to make him feel the glory and honor, and do- 
minion and powei', of the religious system in which he 
believes. The superstitions and delusive traditions and fabri- 
cations, he can overlook more easily than we can, because 
he can more easily see that, as they do him no harm — as 
they are to him not the substance of his religion, but mere 
observances, which those who are wiser in such matters, and 
perhaps holier than he, have, through the later ages of the 
church, thought useful in preserving the faith of the faith- 
ful. So he need not presume to criticise either the ostenta- 
tion and luxury of the scarlet ecclesiastic, nor the humbler 
worship and the more implicit and universal faith and obe- 
dience of those simpler and perhaps more pious souls, for 
whose credulity no miracle or superstition, or tradition or 
sacerdotal imposture, is too gross to be believed. In many 
of these traditions his cultivated mind finds the most inter- 
esting historical truth, and in and about Rome he cannot 
fail to recognize, not literally the footsteps of the Lord, but 
literally those of the most distinguished of his sacred family — 
of those who were with Him in His wanderings in the flesh, 
and who saw Him on the Cross. Here, the proudest em- 
pire the world has ever seen, bowed down in deep humility 
and worshipped Jesus Christ and Him crucified and made 
the Instrument of his ignominy the Ensign of his triumph. 



166 CHRISTIAN MEMORIALS. 

He died in Jerusalem, but be triumpbed in Rome. The 
Cruciiixion was on Calvary, but it was at Rome that the 
Cross was painted in the sky to the eye of Constantine, as 
the standard under which he must win his triumphs. Why 
should we say that the vision of the first Christian emperor 
was any more a frenzy of delirious ecstasy than that of 
Paul ? Where more than here, was the blood of the mar- 
tyrs the seed of the church ? The reasonable Roman 
Catholic does not see any more grounds to doubt the truth 
and reality of the sacred relics and localities which abound 
in Kome, than we do those of the English and French per- 
secutions. The Roman Empire was Christian three hundred 
years after the Crucifixion, and during those three centuries, 
and ever after, the intelligence of ruler and people, of priest 
and lay Christian, was quite equal to that of the time of 
Cranmer and Latimer and Ridley. We do not doubt our 
knowledge of the place where these suffered. How many 
hundreds of pilgrims now visit annually, the houses where 
such as they, and Knox and Calvin and Luther lived — the 
pulpits where they preached, and the graves where they lie. 
Will there ever be any reason to doubt the interesting relics, 
and localities of the American Revolution ? and as our 
country shall extend, and our principles prevail, will they 
not make the assurance of these interesting memorials doubly 
sure ? How much more surely would religious affection and 
zeal perpetuate religious memorials. Everything in reli- 
gious Rome must gieatly strengthen the confidence of those 
who believe in that religion, and it seems to me profound 
catholic wisdom which requires the higher Roman Catholic 
ecclesiastics to visit Rome from time to time. 

It is because there is so much that is true and real — so 
much which we cannot bring ourselves to doubt about — that 
we are surprised and chagrined at the miserable fabrications 
and pious frauds that have been made to cover up and dis- 



ROMAN SECTS. 167 

figure religion wherever the Catholic system exists, free 
from the eye of cultivated Protestantism. The old Pagan 
Romans were an exceedingly religious and weakly credulous 
and superstitious people, and from them have descended, by 
ordinary generation, the same qualities which are equally 
characteristic of the Christian Romans. This Roman in- 
stinct is not enough considered, nor the homogeneous state 
of religion in Italy, when we treat, as we usually do, all 
that we see at Rome as a proper part of the Roman Catholic 
religion. The Roman Catholics of Paris, of London, and 
New-York, I take to be quite as true and regular and 
zealous Catholics, but much less credulous, superstitious, and 
ridiculous, than the Romans. 

Outside of forms and vestments, and traditions and relics, 
however, there is much in the Roman system, which, it 
seems to me, can never cease to shock all right-minded 
Protestants — Auricular confession and human absolution — 
who can forgive sins but God only? — the total absence of 
Christian charity — there is abundance of Roman Catholic 
charity — sects and errorists may exist in their own com- 
munion, and paities of various faiths may be tolerated — 
there may be Jesuits and Jansenists, and what not, and the 
Church wrap them all in her ample bosom — but " out of the 
Church there is no salvation," is one of her cardinal truths, 
and inquisitorial courts and fagots, and tortures and dun- 
geons and death, are the charity she extends to the worthiest 
and purest outside of her pale, where there is no Protestant 
influence or secular power to keep her in check. Ungodly 
intolerance and narrow exclusiveness stain her history for 
hundreds of years. 

The Pope, as the grand autocrat of the priesthood, we 
can tolerate — but his assumption of divine attributes seems 
to me to be blasphemous. " Holy, holy, holy is the Lord 
God Almighty," then how is a shorn priest " His Holiness?'' 



168 THE PAPACY. 

" Thou slialt worship the Lord thy God and Him only" — 
then how shall we dare to adore the Pope and burn incense 
before him, and implore his blessing as our Holy Father ? 
Let him be the Bishop of Rome and the King of the Roman 
States, but let him not arrogate to himself the authority of 
the King of Kings as the Viceregent of Heaven and the 
Vicar of Christ, disposing of earthly thrones and crowns 
and principalities and powers, and declaring that by him 
kings reign and princes decree — granting dispensations from 
Divine law and indulgences to sin, and scattering blessings 
and curses as a usurper of Godlike infallibility. From the 
day the Roman see assumed its temporal power, and be- 
came a secular monarchy, the papacy has profaned its re- 
ligious office and polluted its priestly vestments — and never 
till the Pope shall lose the form — as he has already lost the 
substance of royal authority — in becoming the subordinate 
of one or another secular power, can the Roman Church go 
back to its primitive character. 

Abolish the temporal power of the Pope, make him only 
the Primate, the Bishop of Bishops — the Archbishop of 
Canterbury of the World — the spiritual earthly head of the 
Church, supported by its contributions in such pontifical 
splendor as you please, but without dungeons, or prisons, or 
tortures, or inquisitions, or thunders, or terrors, except 
ecclesiastical — not forbidding to marry — not compelling 
auricular confession — and how long would it be before the. 
Greek Church and a very considerable portion of all Prot- 
estant prelatical churches, would quietly acknowledge him 
as the Shepherd and Bishop of their folds % In my opinion 
not fifty years. 

The Papacy is the natural culmination of the system of 
prelacy. A natural outgrowth and a necessary defence of 
the doctrine of universal external ecclesiastical unity. 
Who shall oversee the overseers is a question always recur- 



CATHOLIC UNITY. 169 

ring in the one-man system wherever a superior grade is 
composed of more members than one — each supreme in his 
own jurisdiction. The system must be pyramidal and find 
its apex in one ultimate overseer or Bishop of the whole. 
If such a formal and external unity could secure a real 
unity of faith in the truth, we might all gladly wheel into 
its ranks and submit to its discipline. But it does no such 
thing An Armenian clergy, a liomish ritual, and a Cal- 
vinistic creed, keep step to a nominal unity — as did of 
old the Pharisees, and Sadducees, and Essenes, and Hero- 
dians, and as do Jesuit, and Jansenist, and Thomist, and 
Molinist, and Congruist, and Augustinian, and all the 
religious orders which constitute the sects of the Roman 
Catholic religion, and which differ from each other more 
than do many of the larger sects of the Protestant faith. 
All the great Protestant denominations have adopted as 
their creed the Apostles' Creed, which is, also, the creed of 
the Roman Catholic Church and of the Greek Church. In 
this there is a unity almost co-extensive with Christendom, 
but it has little effect in producing harmony and brotherly 
kindness. 

The Council of Lateran in 1315, and the Council of 
Lyons sixty years later, prohibited new religious orders — 
with true significance called new religions — in the Church. 
The various religious orders have been well characterized 
as so many little churches in the universal Church — jealous 
of each other and practically unfriendly to real universal 
unity. But this prohibition had no power to prevent the 
great multiplication of new orders, which, at times, have 
almost threatened even the visible unity of the Catholic 
Church. It is quite as impossible to compel universal 
ecclesiastical unity as universal monarchy and universal 
empire. Wherever there is thought and study by differently 
constituted minds — anywhere out of the exact sciences — 

8 



170 QUIETISM. 

there men will arrive at different conclusions, and no 
matter how much power may condemn and prohibit, and 
build up barriers, and decree punishments, and may even 
compel recantations and renunciations — still the conviction 
of the truth is left behind — the opinion remains — and in the 
secret of the closet in the direct communication with God, 
and in the religious contemplation of His divine attributes, 
what the Church has called erroneous, or perhaps heretical, 
the right soul — the conscience, void of offence — has contin- 
ued to believe, and enjoy, and still to maintain its visible 
and real communion with the Church. 

An instance is the putting down Quietism at the end of 
the seventeenth century. Archbishop Fenelon was the 
champion of Quietism, and the attack was led by Arch- 
bishop Bossuet, each of them a prelate of whose great- 
ness and piety any age of any church might be proud. The 
controversy divided Paris and the. Court till it became 
necessary to refer its settlement to His Holiness. He — not- 
withstanding his wisdom and power — handed it over to the 
Holy Office, which appointed a consulting committee of 
seven, selected from six different sects — one Jesuit, one 
Benedictine, two Coi'deliers, one Feuillant, and one Augus- 
tinian. The committee had thirty-seven meetings, and by 
vote of the majority, condemned thirty-seven propositions of 
Quietism, and, thereupon, the Pope condemned them for- 
mally. The good Archbishop of Cambray submitted with a 
docility that was surprising even to good Catholics, and 
from his own Archiepiscopal pulpit condemned his own 
booh, and forbade his friends to defend it. It does not 
appear that, like Galileo he muttered audibly to himself 
his individual belief of the point of faith of which he had 
just renounced the teaching, but the most persuasive teacher 
of it after him — Madame Guion, though she ceased to 
proselyte to the doctrine — continued to live in the belief 



IDOLATRY. 171 

which she had taught so long, yielded daily to its seductions, 
and finally—on its dreamy wings— floated to the realms of 
light, a devout, regular, and faithful daughter of the Church, 
all the while a Quietist. 

What we call idolatry, mariolatry, crucifixolatry, of the 
Roman Catholics, is a hundred fold more conspicuous in 
Rome than with us. They, of course, deny the idolatry— the 
image worship— and insist, with truth, that they do not wor- 
ship the image, but use it to recall more easily and more viv- 
idly the spiritual essence which is the proper ohject of wor- 
ship, and to fix more steadily the attention upon it. This 
would be, perhaps, a satisfactory answer to the charge were 
not this the very thing which the scriptures forbid under 
the name of idolatry. The purpose of images all over the 
world is simply to represent, under visible and physical 
forms of human creation,the spiritual powers which control 
our destinies. The poor heathen does not worship the 
piece of wood or stone which he carries in his belt, or makes 
for the temples of his religion. He worships the represent- 
ed God which the stock or the stone suggests to his imper- 
fect and benighted mind. And when Aaron melted the 
jewels of the people, and finished the moulded gold into the 
form of a calf, it was thus that they proposed to worship the 
God of Israel— before it Aaron built an altar and pro- 
claimed a feast to the Lord. And I cannot help thinking 
that the effect of worship through the representation of 
images, is everywhere the same— to degrade and belittle 
the God that should be always worshipped in his divine 
attributes, and to degrade and belittle religion, by treating it 
as a matter to be addressed to the external senses rather 
than the most mysterious and purely spiritual emotions of 
the soul. The devout adoration with which a really religious 
Catholic takes the consecrated wafer of the Holy Eucharist, 
shows that he believes it the proper object of worship— as 



172 ROMAN CREDULITY. 

though the mere body of our Lord were a proper object of 
that worship which is due only to His Spiritual and Divine 
Nature. 

This worship of the Host, of the Crucifix, and of the 
Virgin Mary, are but instances of their carrying everything 
to excess till it amounts to perversion. So with relics and 
traditions — now we all cherish relics of honored and worthy 
objects — and traditions, the unrecorded history of the past, 
we all treat with respect — but why every fable and fabrica- 
tion should be treated with the respect due to truth and 
reality, does not appear. 

Catholic abuses should not, however, preclude us from 
proper uses. We need not discard the Cross as a sacred em- 
blem of our faith, because the Roman Catholics use it more 
than we think proper. I think it an appropriate sign upon a 
Christian church of whatever shade or denomination of faith 
and practice, and none the less so because the Italians put it 
everywhere in the houses, the fields, and by the wayside, and 
make it an object of worship. Neither do I think that the 
number of fasts, festivals, and saints' days of the Roman 
Church should prevent Protestant Christians from making 
the great historical days of our redemption — the birth, 
death, and resurrection of the Redeemer — the annual occa- 
sion of appropriate religious exercises. We weaken our 
position by our exclusion of such proprieties. 

The credulity of Italian Catholics — marvellous as it is — is 
of course a principal source of the credulity of Catholics all 
over the world. What is believed in Italy may well be 
supposed to be authorized by the Pope, and the Cardinals, 
and the Bishops, who surround him. What the Pope 
believes all must believe, and it must be true ! When 
Archbishop Bedini offers to send to the most faithful of 
American Catholics a winking Madonna for their worship 
and wonder he not only does it with gravity, but sincerity. 



SAINT LUKE. 173 

Ho believes in it, and was, doubtless, shocked at the broad 
grin and guffaw with which the proposition was received by 
the people. All Italy believes in the winking Madonnas 
most faithfully, and this credulity does not belong solely to 
the common people or the ignorant. It is apparently 
believed as faithfully by the nobles in Church, and State, 
and men of science, and men of the world, as by the poor 
peasant that stands agape to swallow its marvels. They all 
believe that St. Luke was an artist, a painter, and a sculp- 
tor, and portraits of the Savior and the Virgin by St. 
Luke are common. The wooden statue of the Virgin 
at Loretto is said to have been his work. They show one 
portrait of the Savior at twelve years of age by St. Luke. 
The principal academy and school of fine art at Rome — the 
Academy of St. Luke — is named after him, as the oldest of 
the old masters. The only evidence we have of the profes- 
sion of St. Luke is that he was a physician — not a maker of 
images. Then how comes it that the Catholic world believe 
in the fabricated history. Besides, it was not till the 
eleventh century that pictures or images were used in 
churches. There was at that early period an artist born at 
Florence, named Luke, who painted some pictures for the 
churches, and like all artists of those days he chose religious 
subjects. He was surnamed the Saint — Luke the Saint, and 
it was easy — after a few hundred years — for Italian super- 
stition and credulity to believe what was asserted, perhaps, 
ignorantly, that these works were the productions of the 
Apostle St. Luke himself. And then the statue of the Vir- 
gin, attributed to him, and said to be carved from a cedar 
of Lebanon, would come to easy belief from the estab- 
lished faith in the portraits. That black wooden statue is 
the precious and holy relic in the Santa Casa — holy house — 
of Loretto. 

The story of the Santa Casa and the statue of Loretto is a 



174 DISCOVERY OF THE TRUE CROSS. 

fit representative story of what we call Catholic superstition 
and credulity, with a vein of romance — I write it for you, 
though Loretto is wide away from my intended route, and I 
should not go there if the two hundred thousand pilgrims that 
in former times annually visited it now thronged the highways 
that lead to that sacred chapel — but they do not. There 
are now only a few more beggars there than elsewhere, it 
is said. You can now see the Chapel, and the Virgin, and a 
few — but only a few — of the rich votive gifts which kings 
and emperors vied with each other in presenting at her 
altar, and, a hundred years ago, were most attractive objects 
of curiosity. The Empress Helena, mother of Constantine 
the Great — next after the Virgin Mary, perhaps, the 
greatest female saint in the calendar — was converted by the 
influences and example of her imperial son, when she was 
sixty-four years of age, and her zeal and devotion were of 
the most exalted character. He placed immense treasures 
at her command, and she went to Palestine to search out 
and to honor the sacred places by building temples over 
them. She discovered the place of the Holy Sepulchre, and 
finally — by deep digging — she discovered near the tomb 
three crosses, also the inscription which had been on the 
cross of Christ, but had become separated from it. She 
found also the nails, but there was nothing to enable her to 
distinguish between the cross of the Savior and those of the 
two thieves — all three having been kept in good preserva- 
tion for three hundred years. The Bishop of Jerusalem 
bethought him of an expedient to identify the sacred cross. 
He had them all three brought to a lady who was danger- 
ously sick, and after prayer for the Divine assistance, they 
touched the patient with each of the crosses in succession. 
The first two produced no effect, but on the touch of the 
third she was perfectly healed, and rose up and glorified 
God. This was, of course, the True Cross. Helena built a 



DISCOVERY OF THE SANTA. CASA. 175 

church there in which she left only a portion of the Cross, 
and transported the residue to Constantinople, and subse- 
quently to Rome, and built for it the Basilica of the Holy 
Cross of Jerusalem, where it now is in a subterranean 
chapel — which no woman is allowed to enter on pain of 
excommunication. It does not appear whether the sex is 
thus proscribed in honor of St. Helena or of the Holy Virgin 
herself! 

Among the other discoveries by Helena in Palestine, tra- 
dition says she was so fortunate as to discover the very cot- 
tage in Nazareth in which the humble Virgin Mary was born 
three hundred years before, in which — by the Heavenly 
overshadowing — her Celestial destiny was announced to her 5 
and in which she, and her husband, and the "Boy God : ' 
reposed, as in their old homestead, on their return from the 
flight into Egypt. She built over that also a splendid temple, 
and inscribed it as the altar where was first laid the founda- 
tions of our Salvation — and thenceforward that house — only 
twelve by twenty-seven feet, and thirteen feet high — was 
held in the most wonderful veneration throughout the Holy 
Land. 

The early fathers and other distinguished pilgrims made 
the journey to Nazareth to see it and to worship at the holy 
altar. When the Turks swept into Palestine they destroyed 
the temple, and would, doubtless, have destroyed this holy 
house, had not angels taken it by night and transported it 
bof3ily to Dalmatia without injury, except the loss of the floor, 
which — by some accident — dropped out as the angels hurried 
through the skies, which satisfactorily accounts for its pres- 
ent pretty floor of tesselated white and red marble. In three 
or four years more the angels transported it to Italy, and in 
midwinter — December 10th, 1264, at midnight — placed it 
in an unfrequented spot near Recanati, when all the trees 
and shrubs bowed with reverential humility, and continued 



176 LORETTO. 

in that posture till they withered and decayed. It seems to 
me they should have tossed their branches and blossomed in 
the midst of December snows, to show their delighted sense 
of the honor — of course they were not trampled down by 
carpenters and masons. The Virgin herself in a vision 
having notified a priest that he might inform the faithful, pil- 
grims soon began to arrive, but the place was infested with 
robbers, and the angels, therefore, moved it again — nearer 
to the town of Recanati — to a place owned by two brothers, 
— who making it a source of profit soon quarrelled — as such 
sacriligeous men should — about the profits, met each other 
in a duel, and Avere deservedly both killed. The an- 
gels then removed the holy house to where it now stands, 
and the town of Loretto sprang up about it by the resort of 
pilgrims and the manufacture and sale of pictures, shrines, 
cameos and medals of the Madonna di Loretto. Pilgrims 
thronged it from all portions of Christendom — tAvo hundred 
thousand a year it is said — and the fame of its miracles and 
relics filled the whole Church on earth. 

This Avould all have been very Avell as a mere legend, to 
have been told Avith variations and Avrought into poems and 
fictions, and never believed, except by the simple, who be- 
lieve everything. But everybody believed it, and Popes and 
Cardinals, Kings and Emperors, and men of wealth of high 
and loA\ r degree, for centuries A'ied with each other in their 
princely contributions to our Lady of Loretto. Among 
them Avere a crown and sceptre with rich jewels — a golden 
cross set with rubies, pearls and diamonds — a crown of 
Lapis lasuli — a crown of agate — a robe for the Virgin, with 
six thousand six hundred and eighty-four diamonds — an 
emerald, four times the size of a man's head, for Avhich 
ninety thousand croAA r ns Avere offered — a very large amethyst 
set in gold — a chain of the golden fleece, set with rubies, 
pearls and diamonds — a golden candlestick, weighing twenty- 



GIFTS AND TREASURES. « 177 

three pounds, set with rubies, opals, emeralds, pearls and 
diamonds — a crown set with pearls and rubies — a pearl as 
large as a pigeon's egg — a piece of virgin gold of eleven 
ounces — a set of altar furniture of amber, set with seven 
thousand pearls, besides diamonds and rubies, and valued 
at two hundred thousand crowns — the Austrian imperial 
eagle, entirely made of diamonds — a ship of gold — the Vir- 
gin's statue of amber — a large golden crucifix, set with six 
sapphires and diamonds — many models of cities and citadels 
in France and Italy, of solid chased silver — and most pre- 
cious of all, a large pearl, having naturally delineated on it 
the Holy Virgin, sitting on a cloud and holding the infant 
Jesus. The treasures of the Santa Casa were beyond com- 
putation — a most prodigious amount of rich vestments, 
lamps, candlesticks, goblets, crowns, crucifixes, images, 
cameos, pearls and gems were among the gifts to its altars. 
The armies of the French Republic that conquered Italy, 
were however as sacrilegious and godless as they were rapa- 
cious and bloody — and the shrine of the holy house was 
stripped of its treasures, and the statue of the Virgin was 
carried to Paris as a curiosity — and after that, the sixty-two 
great lamps of gold and silver — one of the gold ones weigh- 
ing thirty-seven pounds — and the three precious angels, one 
of gold and two of silver, and other ornaments, had their 
places filled with gilt ones, and paste gems took the place of 
the real ones. Pope Pius VII. repurchased the pearl with 
the miraculous image of the Virgin and child, and restored 
it, and to prevent another military plundering, all who enter 
the chapel armed, are excommunicated. The holy cedar 
image of the Virgin was also restored in 1801, but the 
papal commissioner would not allow the sacred relic to* be 
treated so like a profane and secular thing as to be even 
invoiced or set down in the list of restored articles. 

Sixtus V. surrounded the city with a wall, to protect 



178 CHANGES OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 

from the Turks, Santa Casa and its treasury, then in a mag- 
nificent church, containing twenty chapels, and noble works 
of art, and a white marble casing of the holy cottage, with 
its four fronts sculptured all over in the choicest style of art 
by the first artists, with the most beautiful traditions, legends 
and allegories of the church — a work performed under the 
patronage of several Popes. Ten Popes have made pil- 
grimages to it in all sincerity. 

I have written this only to show what the most faithful 
members and authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, 
Kings and Priests, Popes and Heroes, will do to dignify, 
what to us seems to be a transparent fable. So long as this 
remains, Rome cannot complain if Ave look with doubt and 
suspicion and disbelief upon anything that she may say or 
do. Volumes, as we all know, might be written, filled with 
gross superstitions, degrading idolatries, frivolities, and lying 
cheats, originally invented to stupefy, bewilder and mislead 
the people. In most Catholic countries such frauds have 
had their day, while in Italy and Spain new ones, as gross, 
perhaps might be fabricated even now. 

They say the Romish Church never changes. But what 
has changed more, if it be, as they allege, the Primitive 
Church established by the Savior and his Apostles, coming 
down in one unbroken succession ? Come to Rome and sec 
if you can find anything in the actual state of the Church 
meretricious, formal and corrupt, to remind you of the Prim- 
itive Church — simple, and pure, and spiritual. Historically 
it has been in a state of continual change from the begin- 
ning. From the Apostolical purity and simplicity of spiri- 
tual religion, how, by usurpations and changes, it ran up to 
what it was in the time of Hildebrand, and has since run 
down to what it is to-day ! In Italy and New-York how 
unlike! Pope Stephen crowned Pepin, the usurper, and 
dethroned Hilderic — this was the first papal crowning and 



ST. PETER TO PEPIN. 179 

deposition, more than one thousand years ago, and Pepin 
then fought the battles of his Holiness, but not till after 
Stephen delivered to him a letter, written from St. Peter 
himself in Heaven to King Pepin, directing him to right for 
the Church. The letter is too long for me to copy here, but 
it ran in this wise. I translate from the French — not hav- 
ing seen the original, I cannot say in what language it was 
written. 

" Peter, called an Apostle by Jesus Christ, Son of the 
living God, etc., since by me all the Catholic Apostolic 
Roman Church, mother of all other churches, is founded 
upon a rock, etc., to you, Excellent Pepin, etc., etc. If 
you do not fight for me, I declare to you, by the Holy 
Trinity and by my apostleship, you shall never have any 
part in Paradise." 

This letter was enough for Pepin, and he crossed the 
Alps with his army to aid the Pope. I think even Arch- 
bishop Bedini would laugh at such a letter from Heaven 
now-a-days ! The Roman Catholic constitutions and usages 
are undergoing a constant but noiseless change, and the time 
may come when the Roman Church will be only the most 
ritualistic of Christian churches, and devout Catholics will 
look back with almost incredulity to the times of pious 
frauds, devout deceptions, and religious cheateries, which 
do such dishonor to the cause of religion. The same, too, 
of its bigotry and intolerance. There are still those of the 
most faithful who approve of the massacre of St. Barthol- 
omew's day — as all the Romish Church did in the time of 
it, and some of its principal actors were canonized, and a 
medal was struck in its honor — but such a day will never 
come again. Kings and Emperors will never again stand 
three days and nights, in garments of humiliation, in mid- 
winter, in Northern Italy or elsewhere, and chilled, and 
hungry, and disgraced, beg to be admitted to ask the forgive- 



180 INTOLERANCE. 

ness of a domineering and tyrannical priest — as did the 
Emperor of Christendom to a Pope of Rome. It is said 
that Philip II., of Spain — the anecdote gives him too much 
humanity to be true — looking upon the procession of victims 
going to the stake of an auto-da-fe, as he saw a young and 
innocent looking face among them, said to himself, "What 
a pity ! " This being overheard, brought the agents of the 
Inquisition to him, to complain of the scandal to religion 
from such an emotion of sympathy for heretics, and they 
opened a vein in his arm and took a few drops of his royal 
blood and burned it at the stake, and the crime was expiated. 
That could not be done now, thanks to the influence of 
Protestantism and the progress of civil and religious lib- 
erty. 



FAREWELL TO ROME AND ONWARD TO NAPLES. 

OUR last day in Rome was devoted to Mosaics and 
cameos, and bronzes in the Corso and the via Con- 
dotti, for mementoes for our friends and ourselves — memo- 
rials of the Eternal City. The wearisome day being over, 
we took the evening stroll, which Ave had deferred to give 
the Italian moon a fair chance to show her parts. She was 
now out in placid glory, and we went first to see her give 
her inexpressible charm to that greatest of all ruins — the 
Coliseum. 

It is almost worth a journey to Rome to see those lofty 
and toppling walls, those ruined arches, story upon story — 
those almost obliterated seats for eighty thousand people — 
that great arena — those creeping and sweeping vines and 
green flowing plants rooted in the fissures and crannies up 
in the skies, all revealed in the silvery radiance of the queen 
of night. We remained as long as Ave dared in the night 
air, and then Avent for an evening look at St. Peter's, to see 
the effect of the lamps alone from the high altar, lighting 
up that wonder of the world — that effect upon the arches, 



182 MALARIA. 

the columns, the chapels, and the works of art, and the 
worshippers kneeling here and there in solemn silence, you 
may well suppose is quite indescribable. It is these scenes, 
appealing so strongly at the same time to the senses and the 
imagination in the most exquisite taste, that make such 
overpowering religious impressions upon persons of a certain 
temper of mind and heart. 

It was not without hazard that we thus exposed ourselves 
to the evening exhalations. There is a pestilence that lies 
in wait through all this Southern Italian volcanic peninsula, 
to catch the inexperienced, the careless, and the daring — 
when out in the damps of the night in the summer time — 
when the parched earth calls up from its sulphurous and 
bituminous bowels the pestilential damps and mephitic 
gases which constitute the malaria of that immense region 
on the west coast of Italy — extending from Leghorn to 
Terracina, near two hundred miles — embracing the Caui- 
pagna of Rome and terminating in the Pontine Marshes. 
During the summer this whole tract is unhealthy — almost 
certain death to those who sleep with the night air upon 
them — and some portions of it are so pestilential as to be 
only a refuge for the most desperate and guilty felons, who go 
and stay where none will dare to pursue them — relying either 
upon acclimation or upon some preventive or antidote. So, 
in some parts are flocks of lean and ghostly looking shep- 
herds, cattleherds, and hogherds, with immense droves of 
sheep, cattle, and hogs. Scattered over the Maremma are 
the ruins of ancient cities and villas, and well authenticated 
sites of others upon which the insidious plague has breathed, 
and they have fallen and passed away. It is this unhealthi- 
ness which has reduced the population of the States of the 
Church from the millions of antiquity to the thousands of 
the present day. It was unhealthy in ancient times, but has 
constantly grown more and more so without any well ascer- 



WINTER IN ITALY. 183 

tained cause. In and about Rome it is still fatal in summer 
to the laborers, and teamsters, wayfarers, and homeless ones 
who — when night overtakes them — seek no lodging but on 
the turf and under the serene and beautiful sky, amid the 
night dews loaded with death. They wake in the morning 
with ineradicable poison in their vitals. 

We had with us on our passage across the Atlantic a dis- 
tinguished medical professor of New- York, and in answer to 
my inquiry why he should not visit Italy, he said — " I am 
afraid of those paludal fevers in the summer time." He was 
doubtless right not to run the risk, but nevertheless, I kept 
on, and have not regretted it. The more usual course, we all 
know, is to spend the winter in Italy — but I am quite sure 
that the spring, and early summer, and the autumn, are the 
more pleasant seasons in Italy — for then Northern and 
Southern Italy are all in their glory. Then flowers of 
every fragrance and the luxuriance of vegetation — the vines 
in festoons, and grapes in clusters, and the almond, the 
olive, the lemon, and the orange in the valley and on the 
hill-side, lend their charms to landscapes that even without 
them would present an infinite variety of beauty. Rome is 
temperate and Naples mild in winter, but further north the 
winter is bleak and comfortless. A friend of mine was 
snow-bound in Florence so as not to be able to get away 
from it, or get about in it, or to be comfortable in doors. 
We do not seem to be aware till we get there, that Rome is 
in the same latitude as New- York, and that Florence, and Ge- 
noa, and Milan are further north than Boston, and — although 
the European climate is milder than the American in the 
same latitude — still the perennial snows of the Alps and the 
Appenines must make all Northern Italy rather dreary and 
comfortless in winter. Many travellers spend the winter in 
the Italian cities, for the society, as they call it — and they 
do not always tell us that the society is only the society of 



184 ROMAN SOCIETY. 

each other, at their hotels and temporary homes — if hoines 
they can be called. Roman society — as I am informed — is 
quite impenetrable as society. The more eminent, and 
wealthy, and fashionable Italians, give parties or balls dur- 
ing the winter, to which the travellers may be invited, as 
they would be to a ceremony — or as in England they are 
presented at the Queen's drawing-room — but all visiting is 
substantially confined to the travelling or foreign residents, 
interchanging with each other. Protestants and democrats 
are treated civilly, but are not loved, courted, or caressed in 
Rome. 

The monuments are the same at all seasons, and the 
more striking ceremonies of the Roman religion are scattered 
throughout the year, and some of the most attractive 
spectacles are in the warm months, so that if I were to spend 
some time in Italy — and were left to choose my time — I 
think 1 should devote the late winter and the early weeks of 
spring to Naples, and then work gradually up to the north- 
ward and thus find an agreeable temperature, and a constant 
variety of most beautiful scenery at every step. For, after 
all, to be agreeably situated — a continually changing variety 
of agreeable objects and situations — is the perfection of 
travelling. We must encounter many accidents and hair- 
breadth escapes, and they tell well in travellers' stories, but 
they are only pleasant to look back upon, as ended — got 
through with safely. 

" Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit," 

is the desolate and only joy that springs from them. 

After an early breakfast, we took our seats at 7 a. m. in 
the diligence, for a two days' journey to Naples, by the way 
of the Pontine Marshes, notwithstanding the heats of sum- 
mer. As in ancient times, the journey from Rome to Naples 
was the most interesting in the Roman Empire — so now 



DEPARTURE FROM ROME. 185 

nowhere is the mind more absorbed with the reflections, 
which it cannot escape, than when borne quietly along from 
the best part of modern Rome over the Capitoline Hill, you 
see blazoned on the walls of the modern capitol the S. P. 
Q. R. of ancient Roman freedom, and soon find yourself 
crossing pavements deep worn by the chariots of King and 
Consul, and triumphant General and Emperor and Tribune — 
oh, how many centuries ago ! You rattle through the old 
Roman forum, where the eloquence of Cicero and of Hor- 
tensius once echoed — you pass under the Avails of the 
Coliseum, and take your last look of that vast ruin — and as 
always the last, as well as the first thing forced upon your 
mind in Rome, is the Roman Catholic Religion, so here your 
last steps in Rome are under the very droppings of that 
real Metropolitan church of that religion, the parish church 
of which the Pope is pastor, St. John Lateran — omnium 
urhis et orbis Ecclcsiarum Mater el Caput. You drive past its 
beautiful facade through the gate of St. John, and you are 
outside the walls which encircle ancient and modern Rome. 

We are now in the common highway, across the Cam- 
pagna. After a mile or so we take the old A.ppian way, 
and we are rapt into the ancient glory as we see the long 
lines of broken arches — the dilapidated aqueducts of an- 
tiquity relieved against the low horizon — the" broken monu- 
ments — the mouldered piles of what were once the Mausole- 
ums of we know not whom — which border the wayside for 
miles and miles all the way to Albano. 

How idle it would be to attempt any description of such 
a scene, such objects, such memories, and such imaginings. 

" Out upon Time ! who never will leave 
But enough of the past for the future to grieve ! 
Out upon Time 1 he will leave no more 
Of the things to come than the things before 1 " 

Shall the time come when the long line of the now tot- 



186 HORATII AND CURIATII. 

tering and timid religious Cassars shall pass entirely away f 
When future generations shall dig out statues and marbles 
from the buried ruins of St. Peter's, the Campidoglio and 
the Vatican — and the antiquarians shall find all the Komes 
from Romulus to Pius, and the shrines of all saints, and the 
temples of all gods, from Jove to Jesus, only distinguish- 
able by 

" Two or three columns, and many a stone, 
Marble and granite with grass o'ergroTra." 

Here, close by the wayside, between Albano and Laricia, 
before you descend into the valley of the little stream, 
spanned by the beautiful bridge of Laricia, stands a re- 
markable monumental tomb, known for ages as the tomb of 
the Horatii and the Curiatii. It was originally a central 
tower, with four smaller surrounding towers, one on each 
corner of the great base, as though the whole monumental 
pile, with its central tower, was erected in honor of that 
most interesting event in ancient history, the deciding the 
destiny of two powerful nations by single combat of in- 
dividual champions, and its smaller towers were fitting 
memorials of the individual prowess and patriotism of the 
heroic soldiers who assumed so glorious and so bloody an 
arbitrament. How many have sat under the shadow of 
that cenotaph and looked out upon the plain, and fancied 
that they saw the frowning and excited hosts resting upon 
their arms in safety, while their national independence was 
thus the prize of a strife of those champions ! How one 
who has seen Rachel, with a powerful associated cast, play 
in the mighty drama on the stage, with a little imagination 
might revivify those plains with the classic manoeuvres of 
Roman strategy. But modern inquiry has changed all that. 
The charm has passed away. It is now conceded that tha 
battle between the Horatii and Curiatii was not there at all. 
The monument has no relation to the event or the men — 



THE BRIDGE OF LAEICIA. 187 

but is the sepulchral memorial of Aruns, the son of Por- 
sena, King of Etruria, sent by his father to take Aricia. 
Such is monumental and traditional history. A remark- 
able pile like this, near to what has always been, through 
all its wonderful changes, one of the most intelligent cities 
of the world — Ancient and Modern Rome — standing close 
by its greatest thoroughfare, has nevertheless lost the tradi- 
tion, and memory, and record of the event which it was 
erected to commemorate ! After standing centuries for one 
memorial, it suddenly sets up with the same confidence for 
another — and after a few hundred years more, who shall 
say it will not, in the few stones that will then be left in the 
earth, be exhumed as still another'? How the foundations 
of human belief tremble as the best established traditionary 
facts are jostled and overthrown in such a country as this — 
so made up of ruins, traditionary fabrics, and fabricated 
traditions, and vouchers to match. It seems to mo, that it 
would not be impossible that if an earthquake should topple 
down this magnificent bridge of three stories of superposed 
arches, in a few short years thereafter the ruins would, by 
universal consent, be established as a relic of the first age of 
Roman taste — perfect, classic, masonry and engineering. 
M. and I crossed this bridge on foot, and left the diligence 
to dash down into the ravine and tug up its precipitous 
sides — some temporary reason preventing its crossing the 
bridge It is a wonderful bridge — there are three tiers of 
arches, one above the other — the top one for carriages — 
the next below presents a fine covered foot-way, formed by 
arched openings through all the piers of the arches. It was 
on this that we passed over. The whole structure has a 
regularity, beauty and finish, which seems almost beyond the 
art of masonry. It is new. 

It was to this place that we were accompanied by a papal 
guard — all the way in the high and bright morning— all the 



188 PAPAL DRAGOON. 

way, as it were in the suburbs of Rome, and under the very 
eye of His Holiness. What a commentary upon the govern- 
ment of his triple crown ! All the sanctions of arbitrary 
power, civil and religious, in his irresponsible hands — with 
the keys of Heaven, Earth, and Hell in his belt — yet he 
cannot make it safe to travel in his dominions! All the 
roads about Rome are infested by banditti, so that no one 
would think of travelling after nightfall. Our guard — he 
was but one — soon left us. I presume he would not dare 
travel with us except in the broadest day time, for fear of 
robbers. He was a finely dressed and caparisoned dragoon, 
soldier-like, and every way respectable in his appearance. 
His cap was after the style of a Grecian helmet, with the 
universal papal device — the keys — in embossed gilding on 
the front — and his white dress, arms and accoutrements, 
were exceedingly becoming. He was really an ornament to 
us. We had not travelled far on our journey, before we had 
a specimen of his power and utility. We saw before us 
one of those characteristic donkeys to which I have often 
alluded, loaded all over, up and down, and round about, 
with nobody- knows-what variety of traps and things. From 
some unknown cause, whether from mischief or fright Ave 
could not see, he started suddenly and ran away from his 
master, at the top of his speed. His little trotters, beneath 
his bulky load, played with all the rapidity and undistin- 
guishable confusion of drum -sticks beating the roll-call, and 
ever and anon, one piece of his load would fly in one direc- 
tion, and another in another, till finally freed from all his 
load, he found himself headed off by our friend the guard, 
who, as donkey was about to pass him, wheeled his horse 
across his path. The little quadruped seemed to suppose 
that he was interrupted by some vulgar Italian, and was 
evidently raising his ears to take the attitude of lofty indig- 
nation, when, lifting his eyes, they apparently fell upon the 



PONTIXE MARSHES. 189 

keys on the dragoon's cap. In an instant he was meek and 
subdued, and trotted quietly back. I think I mentioned 
that he was an ass. As long as we could see him, his 
master was reconstructing his load. 

All this region is full of traditionary localities and monu- 
ments, but we did not wander from our path to see them. 
We were too anxious to complete our day's journey before 
night fall — our route leading through the Pontine Marshes, 
described before the time of Augustus as pestifera Pontina 
Lacus. Before the building of Rome, Pometia was a large 
and populous city in this vicinity, and the marsh originally 
took its name from its being near that city, and it is indis- 
criminately called Pometine, Pomptine, and Pontine Marsh. 
It is about thirty miles long, and two wide, and not very 
far from the sea coast. Lying about on the level of the sea 
— the streams from the mountains, when swollen with rains, 
pour their torrents into and deeply overflow the banks of the 
sluggish canals that traverse the low grounds. The burning 
heats of summer exhale from those marshes a malaria so dan- 
gerous that it has been sometimes said to be the cause of the 
bad air of Rome, which is forty miles distant. It was, doubt- 
less, once a healthy region, for it was spoken of as one of the 
most fertile portions of Italy, and it was covered with cities, 
and villages, and villas. Pliny says there were twenty-three 
cities there. As they became more and more swampy and 
unhealthy the ancient Romans endeavored to drain them. 
Three hundred years before Christ, Appius Claudius — in 
building the Appian way through them — made canals, and 
sluices, and bridges. By the way, the Appian way is now 
some eight or ten feet below the surface of the beautiful 
road which has been since constructed. Much was done 
one hundred and fifty years later by Cethegus — and Julius 
Cresar would, doubtless, have completed his vast plans for 
draining these marshes, had not his death prevented. Since 



190 PONTINE MARSHES. 

that time emperors and popes have, from time to time, 
endeavored to accomplish what has never yet been done— 
the draining of these unhealthy swamps — although the 
passage through them is made safe and beautiful. It is, 
indeed, a great curiosity — the road through them being per- 
fectly straight and perfectly level for thirty miles, bordered 
with a row of fine trees on each side, beyond which is a 
canal — close on each side — with a lazy and imperceptible 
current tending steadily to the sea. This has drained the 
marshes so as to make them cultivable by a sickly race of 
people. In these marshes predatory banditti have their 
homes, and rush upon the traveller from their swampy 
recesses. The vegetation is of course luxuriant and beauti- 
ful, exceedingly, and the cattle that feed on the luxuriant 
and juicy grasses are fat and sleek, and the birds leap from 
festoon to festoon of wild and — for aught I know — poison- 
ous vines, and sing cheerily and happily as if they were in 
the garden of a queen. We had two fellow passengers who 
were Englishmen, and nothing could make them believe that 
the Pontine Marshes were unhealthy, since cattle, and birds, 
and plants grew so finely there. Herds of buffaloes run 
wild there, and you sometimes see a drove of tame ones 
driven by a tall Italian on horseback, with his brigand hat, 
and cloak, and long cudgel, which at a distance — as he 
rushes on, darting in and out of sight — seems like a gun, and 
you cannot help thinking of brigands and robbers, and how 
unfrequented and uninhabited the place is, and how easy to 
throw you into the canal, or draw you off where none will 
think of following or searching for you. These buffaloes are 
only used for work, like oxen — their flesh is said to be hard, 
and dry, and coarse, and not good for food. "We saw them 
more frequently after we had passed quite through the 
marshes. 

Off at the right, just after entering upon the marshes, is 



APPIX FORUM. 191 

the site of Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, where the 
brethren from Rome came to meet Paul — whom they had 
heard to be on his way to Rome. What a weary time the 
great Apostle must have had in his long journey to Rome — 
a prisoner — bound, on voluntary appeal, to a heathen Roman 
emperor, to whom he preferred to submit his right as a min- 
ister of the new religion, rather than to the Jews — his 
countrymen — who sought to kill him. He well knew 
that there were proselytes of the new faith at Rome, for he 
had written to them from Greece his masterly Epistle to the 
Romans. 

In corrupt, but elegant and gifted Corinth, it was as an 
orator and a man of letters that he preached the pure doc- 
trine of a spiritual religion — in curious Athens it was as a 
freeman and a philosopher, as well as a Christian, that he 
disputed with the philosophers, and harangued the intellec- 
tual populace — but at Rome he was one of a gang of pris- 
oners, in custody of a centurion, and his guard of soldiers, 
and he might well have supposed that the Roman converts 
would publicly avoid him, or at least refrain from associating 
with him while he was thus a culprit and a prisoner. When 
they came to meet him and to welcome him to the city of 
the Caesars, in his bonds and imprisonment, how his heart 
opened to them and to God, and how significant the simple 
record of the event, " Whom when Paul saw, he thanked 
God and took courage." Who shall say that, notwith- 
standing his never-failing boldness and proper Christian 
pride before men, and his humility before God, he may not 
sometimes, in his wearisome voyages of months and months 
from Cesarea to Puzzuoli — now struggling among the islands 
of the Archipelago — now wind-bound — now tossed by the 
tempest for two weeks, till all hope was taken away, and 
they were on the point of starvation — when at midnight 
they sounded and found twenty fathoms, then fifteen ! per- 



192 ST. PAUL. 

baps tho next moment the rocks ! — the sailors stealing over 
the sides to run away in the boat — then the proposition to 
kill Paul and the other prisoners, lest they should escape — 
then the ship going to pieces — then cast ashore on broken 
pieces of the ship among barbarous and venomous vipers ! — 
who shall say that even he did not at times feel his spirit 
sink within him, fearing that Divine Providence was frown- 
ing on his unnecessary rashness in appealing to Caesar! Not 
he. In that darkest night of so many days' duration, he 
alone was of good cheer, for there stood by him the angel 
of God, and told him that it was the purpose of God that 
he should be brought before Caesar. It was Paul's words 
of encouragement that prevented the sailors from running 
away with the boat — he made them all take nourishment 
before the final catastrophe, and over the hurried and peril- 
ous meal he gave thanks to God in presence of them all. 
There his trust in God was contagious, and they were all of 
good cheer — and so not a man was lost. Paul's faith never 
failed him — but we may well suppose that even after those 
most remarkable deliverances — after spending a week with 
unexpected brethren at Puzzuoli, he might still look forward 
to his reception in that voluptuous and idolatrous city as 
perhaps the beginning of his severest trials. It is hardly 
imaginative to say that it was from a doubting and anxious 
reverie of this sort that he hailed as a happy premonition 
the welcoming smiles of unknown brethren thus openly 
coming a day's journey to meet him in his bonds. 

It was nearly dusk when we were through the marshes, 
and our postilions trotted us up to the hotel at Terracina — 
the Anxur of the Volscians of old. We were weary with 
our day's journey, and I did not — though one of our fellow 
travellei-s did — go out to look at the ruins, which, if we had 
not been at Rome, we should doubtless have found worth 
looking at, There is a temple to Jupiter Anxurus — a palace 



TEKRACINA. 193 

of Theodocia, on a hill overlooking the town and the sea — 
and an ancient port, or harbor, constructed by Antoninus 
Pius — the rings in the stones are still there — and the cathe- 
dral contains some interesting scraps of ancient art. Ter- 
racina is the last town in the present Roman territory — it is 
the frontier town between the Roman and the Neapolitan 
kingdoms. 

We had a mean supper and poor sleep in this only tavern 
at Terracina. The hotel is situated on the shore of the 
Mediterranean — its foundation stands in the water — and the 
pleasant and soothing dashing of the wavelets beneath our 
window could not prevent me from thinking of the brigands 
that are known to infest the woody hills — small mountains — 
that rise rapidly from the opposite side of the street in front 
of the hotel. Indeed, when we retired, men that it required 
no imagination to suppose to be robbers, were lying about, 
stretched out apparently for their night's repose on the 
ground all about the hotel — but as I passed near them, I 
could see their sharp, black eyes, darting, as it were, from 
their swarthy faces, as though they would pierce me through. 
Without being at all alarmed or nervous, we slept poorly, 
and long before early dawn we were up for our early start, 
and after a cup of the vilest coffee, and nothing to eat that 
we could eat, we again took to the road. 

The peasants were out, however, before us, going to their 
work in the early dawn. There was the buffalo -drover-, 
also, on horseback, with his flowing cloak and steeple hat, 
and long pike, keeping his herd together, as the land opened 
out into a bushy plain. There were the residents of the 
wayside stirring about, with the tame pet pigs following 
them about like dogs — and there, in the running stream, 
stood the washerwomen, with their clothes clewed up to 
their middle, and washing and rinsing, without soap or fire, 
or other wash-board than a smooth stone. From every 
9 



194 HEROIC REGION. 

house rushed out at us swarms of beggars, and sent their 
plaintive moans to us with uplifted and imploring hands, as 
they kept up with the free trot of the diligence, and followed 
us till we passed out of their beat, and another detachment 
rushed upon us. It being quite plain that it was not want 
that made them beg, but a habit, or rather a trade, we of 
course did not feel called upon to give them anything— 
though sometimes, to get rid of them, we threw two or three 
coppers on the ground for them to scramble for, while we 
got out of their reach. All classes that we saw, if we 
judged by their dress and appearance, we should consider 
abject beggars, clothed in rags, and pieces of skins bound to 
their limbs and feet with thongs, barefooted women, clad— 
if you can call it clad — in tattered wrappers, patched 
with every color, and with a coarse white cloth on their 

heads. 

These are the successors of those brave old races of anti- 
quity—those great leaders in the triumphs of peace as well 
as of war— whose heroic deeds have made so celebrated this 
small portion of earth which lies between Rome and Naples. 
Here Latinus, and uEneas, and Ascanius, reigned. Here 
were the Volscians and the Rutulians, and the Albans. Here 
were born Juvenal and Cicero and Marius— here were in 
exile Coriolanus, Camillus and Caius Marius— here was 
the scene of many of the bloodiest battles in history, and 
the site of renowned cities without number — now all gone. 
The Eoman Empire covered all Europe, but here are the 
footsteps of its greatest men. 

" The waters murmur of their name, 

The wooda are peopled with their fame — 
The silent pillar, lone and gray, 
Claims kindred with their sacred clay— 
The meanest rill, the mightiest river, 
Rolls mingling with their fame forever— 
Despite of every curse she bears, 
That land, is glory's still, and theirs ! " 



FONDI. 195 

Fondi is the frontier town of Naples — and we, of course, 
stopped for the usual custom-house ceremonies. It had 
been suggested to us that if all the passengers would con- 
tribute a small sum each, the conductor would arrange the 
matter with the Dogana — custom-house — much more reason- 
ably than for each man to pay his particular douceur to the 
office. As our whole journey now lay in the Neapolitan 
Kingdom, it would of course be but one contribution, and 
we readily agreed to it, and made up our little purse, and 
things went on smoothly enough. But to our great surprise we 
had the same thing to do over again four times more before 
we arrived, and after I was quietly in the Hotel de FUnivers at 
Naples, the conductor made his appearance for the sixth 
contribution, which I of course paid. 

Fondi — the ancient Fundi — is beautifully situated in the 
midst of a fertile but unhealthy plain — its muddy, stagnant 
waters producing the paludal fevers so fatal in these regions. 
The town itself was filthy and loathsome beyond all my 
experience. Its principal street is part of the Appian way, 
with the original pavement, but a sort of public square, on 
which was the church, and the principal shops, and the 
custom-house, was filled with cattle, donkeys, goats, sheep, 
and dogs, and their filth, for which the people seemed to be 
fit companions. We had been riding long and were hungry, 
but nothing to eat could be procured which we could eat. 

For a while in the morning — till we passed Fondi, drag- 
ged slowly through the hills to Itri, and began to descend — 
we were shut out from the sea by the land, but afterward 
again for a long period the road ran along the shore, giving 
us a view of the Mediterranean as far as the eye could reach. 
We looked up upon the cities, and out upon the plain, the 
shore, and the sea — taking in the balmy breath of the 
breeze, which brought a little rippling sea to break on the 
beach in a miniature surf, exceedingly beautiful — nothing 



196 GAETA. 

like the roar or even the voice of many waters, only the 
whisper of that midland tideless sea — 

" Where the wildest of waves, in their angriest mood, 
Scarce break o'er the breadth of the land for a rood." 

"We thus passed along the shore of the Bay of Gaeta, 
which sweeps round a curve of most exquisite beauty to the 
high promontory where stands the castle of Gaeta, about 
which lies that magnificently situated city which was the 
city of refuge for the exiled Pope Pius IX., tendered to him 
by that faithful and exemplary saint, the King of Naples. 
As -the road runs, our view of Gaeta is across the bay, with 
a full view of all the shore. We were all enraptured with 
the scene, and did not wonder that His Holiness, should in 
the midst of such scenery, be as contented as it was possible 
for him to be in exile, while his Zion mourned that the voice 
of freedom should be heard within her gates, and the ban- 
ners of political regeneration should wave upon her ram- 
parts. It was while here in captivity, that His Holiness 
vowed a vow that if he should be restored to his temporal 
kingdom, he would make a pilgrimage to the Santa Casa of 
Loretto, and pour out his soul in gratitude to the Holy 
Virgin before the Sacred Cedar-of-Lebanon sculptured by 
St. Luke, which I mentioned in a previous letter. 

It was on this beautiful beach that Scipio and Loelius 
used to stroll and study conchology as the amusement of 
their otherwise idle hours. The cape has its name from 
Cajeta — the nurse of iEneas — who was buried here, accord- 
ing to Virgil, in the opening lines of his seventh book — 

" Tu quoque littoribiM nostris, ^Eneia nutrix, 
jEternam moriena famam, Cajeta, dedieti. 
Et nunc servat honos sedem tuus." 

As we pass, at a distance, the locality of the Formian villa 
of Cicero — and, close by the roadside, what is now called the 



CICERO. 197 

tomb of Cicero, the mind is forced to dwell for a moment 
on the memory of that great Pagan — the noblest Soman 
of them all. I know it has been the fashion of some writers 
to speak of Cicero as timid and cowardly, but in my judg- 
ment, with the greatest injustice. If there ever was a mere 
civilian who never shrank from the post of duty, it was 
Cicero. In the most perilous times, his firmness and virtue 
more than once saved his country from the most wicked and 
determined traitors, and when his enemies were known to be 
seeking him, he determined to await his fate in this very 
Formian villa, declaring that he would not flee from the 
country he had saved. When, at last, hurried by his servants 
to the fields, he was overtaken by his assassins, he did not 
even ask his life, nor make any appeal to their humanity, 
their justice, or their patriotism, but nobly and silently 
bowed his head to the sword that struck it from his shoul- 
ders. 

The tomb is said to be on the very spot where he was 
killed by a tribune whose life he had saved by his eloquence. 
In the time of his later life, men and principles were so 
vacillating that it would be strange, indeed, if he had never 
been charged with weakness and indecision — but he never 
hid in a marsh, like Caius Mari us, nor joined the external 
enemies of his country, like Coriolanus — two of the greatest 
and bravest Roman captains. He was great and heroic in 
all his qualities — a man of science and literature — a states- 
man, and a philosopher — a patriot in public life, and a true 
friend in private life — an orator and a writer — unequalled 
in all. I will not let pass this opportunity to say, that, 
take him for all in all, he was, in my judgment, a greater 
ornament and honor to the race of man than any other 
uninspired man who lived before the birth of Christ. 

Here again we saw stretching across the plain, and finally 
crossing our road near Garigliano, the long line of ruined 



198 CAIUS MAKIUS. 

arches of an ancient aqueduct — the most striking of all ruins 
are these aqueducts — and there, too, were the ruins of Min- 
turnae, near which, in the marshes, Caius Marius was found 
concealed in the mud — and which are made immortal by his 
celebrated exclamation to the slave who had been sent, to kill 
him in his disabled condition — "Man, dare you kill Caius 
Marius !" and he looked the wretched kern so sternly in the 
face that he slunk away to those who sent him and told 
them he could not kill Marius. 

The bridge across the Garigliano is forever famous for the 
wonderful defence of it by the chevalier Bayard " without fear 
and without reproach" — by his single arm, against an attack 
of two hundred Spanish cavalry — and effectually checking the 
victorious enemy so as to save the French army. For this 
miraculous feat of bravery he well deserved the coat-of-arms 
which his royal master conferred upon him — a porcupine,with 
the motto vires agminis unus habet. This, perhaps, as much 
as any one feat, exhibits the prodigious bravery, strength, 
and military skill of some of those knights of the middle ages, 
who, clad in the heavy dress of steel armor, with inconceiv- 
able dexterity, did such execution with their blades alone. 

After passing Garigliano, we left the shore and bore 
inland for Capua, passing through what would be called in 
Italy a fertile and rich agricultural district. The corn was 
about receiving its second hoeing, and I counted the laborers 
in two fields — in one there were twenty and in the other 
twenty-three, of whom in each field sixteen were women. 
Think you, with — 

" Love-darting eyes, and treeses like the morn ? 
Without a shoe or stocking, hoeing corn." 

Oh, no! but coarse Italian women, in looped and windowed 
raggedness, pursuing their usual daily avocation of field 
laborers, hoeing corn, with the few men, who seemed to be 



CAPUA A VERS A . 199 

exceptional cases. We saw one man tending a drove of 
hogs — a hogherd — pastorally, if not poetically, reclining 
among his grunters, and utilizing his moments with knitting. 

»' Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin.'' 

Who knows but this attachment may have been suggested by 
the ' ' knitting-work" of the handsome Alexis? As we approach 
more nearly to Capua we were much amused by the modes 
of transporting the products of the fields, and the odd combi- 
nations which were presented in all the varieties of teams 
that could be produced by the little donkey, the great ass, the 
horse, the cow, the ox, and the buffalo, single and combined, 
in every possible congruous and incongruous union, abreast 
and tandem, and carrying their loads in every possible mode 
— so grotesque and so ungraceful — so unlike anything we 
had seen before. It gave certainly an appearance of indus- 
try and thrift, but contrasted oddly with the scenic beauty 
of the fields by the wayside and the graceful trees, all wound 
with luxuriant vines, which pass from one tree to the other 
in long and leafy festoons. In the streets of Capua we first 
saw the chain-gangs of prisoners at work under the care and 
drive of their keepers 

From Capua we took the route by Aversa — anciently 
Atilla — celebrated among the Romans for its witticisms and 
pleasantries as well as for the grossness of its spectacles and 
its debaucheries. It is now a new and handsome town of some 
twenty thousand people, in the midst of a most picturesque 
and fertile country. Here is the celebrated Lunatic Asylum 
established by Murat — able to accommodate five hundred 
patients — conducted on the principles of modern reform. I 
should have been glad to stop and look at it, but was not 
able to do so. The ingenuity of the little beggars that 
beset the diligence while we stopped was exhibited in a new 
form — one of them mounting on the shoulders of another so 



200 CAPUA TO NAPLES. 

as to be brought in the closest contiguity to us, to moan at 
us face to face, unless we bought our freedom with a few 
coppers. 

Along the journey from Capua to Naples, cactuses of 
great size run up their bare poles along the wayside, fifteen 
to twenty-five feet high, looking for all the world like tele- 
graph posts, and here and there a palm tree lent its beauty 
to the fertile plain, now in the freshness and luxuriance 
of its loveliest dress. 

The rags, wretchedness, and beggary and filth, that were 
constantly before us — the bad look of the stragglers by the 
wayside and in the bushes — and the paltry official cheating 
at almost every post, all the way from Rome, gave us anything 
but an exalted opinion of the salutary influence of the in- 
fallible King of Rome and Lis pious son, the King of Naples. 



(SCffaptM ^ftiriMiitft. 



NAPLES. 



"T~Y~TE arrived at Naples after nightfall, and wended our 
V V way to the Hotel de V Univers, where, having se- 
lected our rooms, commanding a full view of the Chiaia, 
the Villa Reale, and the bay and the islands, we took to 
our bed, and sought rest from a weary day's travel. We 
slept without waking till the morning light lit our 
chamber to the broadest day, which enabled us to see 
the multitudinous fleas that hopped about our sheets, ap- 
parently in convulsive gratitude, for the quiet and luxurious 
feed which they had enjoyed during the night. They are so 
numerous that one does not think of killing them except 
when caught in the very act of biting. Do not believe that 
we found these vermin in an ill-kept house — not at all. 
The Hotel de C Univers is one of the very best hotels, in 
situation and in keeping, in Naples, and quite equal to any 
one we found in our travels — large, airy, and well -ventilated 
and neatly furnished rooms — wide and open, and well-dusted 
stairways — a fine and spacious dining saloon, and a public 



202 villa ream; — chiaia. 

table for dinner, comparing favorably with tbe botels in our 
own large cities. The best hotels of Naples are said to be 
all deserving of the high praise usually accorded to them, 
and the presence of fleas is an inevitable nuisance, like mos- 
quitoes and gnats in some localities of our country. Our 
hotel, and two others of the same class, are situated on 
the Chiaia, looking across the Villa Reale, and out upon and 
far down the bay toward Capri and the open sea, as far as 
the eye can reach. The Chiaia is a broad street, say one 
hundred and fifty to two hundred feet wide, and some two 
miles or so in length, on the margin of the most westerly 
of the two smaller bays from which the city rises up the 
slopes more or less steeply. Its northern side is built up 
with fine hotels and palaces, while its southern side is open 
to the bay — but between it and ihc water lies the Villa 
Reale — Royal Villa — a fine public place or garden, with its 
grottoes and little groves of small trees, its walks and seats, 
and recesses and fountains, and shrubs and flowers and sta- 
tues without number, arranged with taste and variety. This 
spacious and agreeable promenade and place of repose and 
evening recreation, about a mile and a half in length, is pre- 
served and kept in order at the royal expense for the gratifi- 
cation of citizens and strangers. Before the political out- 
breaks of 1848, the royal military bands played in the even- 
ing in the Villa Reale, and sent their echoing harmonies 
through all the scene and its surroundings, while crowds of 
listeners thronged the romantic grounds. Fear of the people 
has now discontinued so interesting an entertainment — for 
it brought so many together. Music is no longer permitted 
and these public pleasure gi ounds have lost most of their 
value. 

The Villa Reale is open to only well dressed and well be- 
haved persons, except on the great festival of the city, when 
it is free to all — and of course few then enter except the 



CHIAIA VILLA REALE. 203 

vulgar crowd. The Chiaia is about wide enough for six 
carriages to drive abreast without crowding or inconveni- 
ence, and in the afternoon, in fine weather, especially or. 
Sunday, it is thronged to its utmost comfortable capacity 
with the wealth and fashion of the city, mostly in open car- 
riages, fine equipages, driving at a moderate and dignified 
rate, coming in at one end of the sti-eetand going out at the 
other, in an endless chain, round and round, seeing and be- 
ing seen by each other, and by the pedestrians walking and 
sitting in the shades of the Villa Reale. It was from our 
windows an exceedingly novel, striking, and luxurious sight. 
If the eye chance to wander from the gay cavalcade, it 
rests with unsatisfied delight upon the vessels, and waters^ 
and islands, and shores of the bay — no surf breaks upon the 
shore, no roar echoes from the hills or the rocks — but a gen- 
tle and laughing ripple dances along the beach, and its whis- 
pers arc borne to you on the balmiest and gentlest of breezes, 
while on the bosom of the bay fit here and there the numer- 
ous little Mediterranean water-craft, with their picturesque 
build and rig, as easy and indolent, apparently, as the wa- 
ter upon which they float, and the lazy Italians that lounge 
about the decks. 

Let every traveller, if he can, have his rooms fronting on 
the Villa Keale. When you rise in the early morning, and 
when you lounge after weary sight-seeing — when in the cool 
and hush of the early evening, or in the starry and stilly 
night, or when the landscape, the land and the water, the 
ships and the islands, shine with the silvery lustre of the 
moon — at any time, and at all times you love to linger about 
your balconies, and you never tire of the scene. 

The morning after our arrival, we took a cicerone and a 
barouche, and set out for the lions. I surrendered myself to 
Lorenzo, not doubting that I might rely upon him with as 
much confidence as I had done upon Mariano at Rome. He 



204 SCHOOL OF VIRGIL. 

proposed to take me to the School of Virgil. I had not the 
slightest idea what it could be, but the name had a good 
sound, and so I went on submissively a mile or two or three 
on the main road, called the Margellina, till coming to a nar- 
rower and less beaten road, he told us to leave the carriage, 
as it would go no further, assuring us that it was only a step. 
We followed him till M. ceased to feel the magic of the 
name of the School of Virgil, having given out with weari- 
ness — she determined therefore to sit on the grass of the 
wayside till we should return, as it was only a step. On I 
followed Lorenzo over precipitous rocks, and through com- 
fortless ravines, heated and tired — the thermometer at about 
80°, till we reached the School of Virgil, a few ruins and re- 
lics, which doubtless would have been interesting, had we 
not just come from the ruins of Rome — but to me not worth 
going to see, and for aught I know, it might as well be called 
anything else as the School of Virgil. I began to feel impa- 
tient and anxious, as I was dragged further and fui ther along 
and away from M., on a path which, left to myself, I could 
not retrace — and I became more and more anxious for her, 
exposed as she was to I know not what alarms. I soon, 
therefore, insisted upon being guided back again without de- 
lay. We had not however returned far, before we came to 
a dwelling with a sort of a museum, with a bolted and bar- 
red enclosure, through which we had passed, and there, shut in, 
we found M. Tired of waiting for us, vexed at our delay, 
and alarmed for her own safety, wearied as she was, she 
had determined to follow us, trusting to luck to lind us, and 
had entered this place. They had let her in without hesitation, 
supposing that she wanted to see the antiquities — but they 
could not undprstand a word of English or French, nor she 
of the Italian, neither had they apparently studied the same 
language of signs. Having let her in they would not let 
her out without pay, which she beginning to understand 



THE STREETS AND THE PEOPLE. 205 

found, that of all the days in the year, she, for the first time, 
was without money in her pocket. She now feared that by 
some other path we might come out at her original resting- 
place, and not finding her there, go to the carriage, and still 
not finding her, think her lost. The more she was anxious? 
excited, and imploring, the more they did not understand each 
other, and when we came she was the image of despair — 
convinced that she was perfectly powerless. The most of 
a day had been thus spent in a toiling search for nothing 
worth looking for. The only thing that had really pleased 
me, was a mere outline sketch in fresco, on the wall of a 
fountain now dry and dusty, which was ancient, and had 
been brought to light fn some comparatively recent excava- 
tions. It was the figure of a water nymph of exceeding 
beauty, and grace and spirit. 

A drive about the city showed us its well-known charac- 
teristics. Every one apparently out of doors, at work or at 
play, cooking his macaroni or plying his trade — the streets 
thronged with mechanics at work — with idlers — with Mer- 
ry-Andrews and Punch and Judy — and all sorts of fantas- 
tical — showing an idle and a merry people. A few pence 
a day for the poorer classes, quite suffices to supply all their 
wants — hence it is that begging pays so abundantly, and is 
a large and prosperous profession, and idleness and pleasure 
occupy so much of the time of those who do not beg. 

The city is, in many portions, very well built — it is irreg- 
ular and uneven, like Boston. Its principal street is To- 
ledo-street, a long street of reasonable width, full of shops, 
exceedingly small, compared with those of New- York, but 
well filled with handsome merchandise. The street is 
thronged with people of all classes, on foot and in carriages 
and omnibuses, almost all well dressed, and all seeming hap- 
py. Out of London, Paris, New- York, and Philadelphia, 
I do not know such another street. The King's palace, the 



206 VILLA OF LUCULLUS. 

grand mole, and all the military constructions, are very fine, 
massive, and royal. 

Naples is a large city, of some 450,000 people. It has 
history, ruins, works of art, aqueducts, &c, and fine 
churches without number, but all are inferior to those of 
Rome, and, of course, we sought them with less interest 
than we should have done had we come to Naples before visit- 
ing the Eternal City. Indeed, we did not enter a church 
in Naples, except on Sunday, and then only when we at- 
tended church at the little chapel of the English consulate, 
which maintains the service of the English Episcopal Church, 
for the benefit of residents and strangers. All persons who 
attend, that is, all strangers, are expected to pay, on entering, 
half a dollar, as a contribution to the expenses. Being two 
weeks later in Naples than I intended, and the heat becom- 
ing great, I determined to shorten my stay — why, then, 
should I devote any part of that time to running from 
church to church and chapel to chapel, only to encumber 
my memory with more details of the same class, but inferior 
in character and interest to those of Rome? 

We took a drive to the ruins of the villa of Lucullus, on 
the shore, and extending out under the water, nearly oppo- 
site the island of Nicida. It is this running out of ruins 
into and under the water on these shores, of which there 
are instances here, and at Baia? and Pozzuoli, which, I fancy, 
has given rise to the fabulous slories of sunken cities swal- 
lowed up by earthquakes, or suddenly submerged in the 
heavings of volcanic destruction. I believe the shores have 
slowly settled away for centuries and risen again as slowly, 
but not to any great extent — for it is always the ruined 
foundations that Ave see under the water, not the higher 
chambers nor yet the lofty spires and towers, which would 
be the evidence of still deeper ruins, and suggestive of sud- 
den and dreadful disasters. A son of Lucullus had a ma<r- 



EXTINCT VOLCANOES. 207 

nificent villa in Nicida, to which Brutus retired after the 
assassination of Caesar. Here he had his interviews with 
Cicero, and here he separated from Portia, before he de- 
parted for Philippi, never to see her again. 

A short distance further is the grotto del cane, a cavern 
which is constantly filled with mephitic gas, in which, for a 
small fee, they put a dog, that you may see him suffocate 
and come to life again when returned to fresh air. I would 
much sooner give twice the fee rather than see such an ex- 
periment. We did not see it. The Solfatara, a little fur- 
ther on, is a smouldering and half-extinct volcano, whose 
crater, when struck, sounds hollow and cavernous enough to 
suggest the possibility of breaking through, while from the 
fissures of the rocks and clefts in the earth, crusted with 
sulphur and alum, sulphurated and ammonical gases and 
whizzing steam threaten to strangle you. Still further on 
is Monte Nuovo, a mountain several hundred feet high, 
thrown up, from a level plain, in three days, by a Vomiting 
volcano, suddenly bursting out and with sublime activity, in 
thunder volleys casting up immense volumes of fire and 
red-hot rocks, terrifying beasts and birds as well as men, 
and piling up this mountain. In another direction are the 
Phlegraean fields, made up of ancient craters of sleeping 
volcanoes. The cave of the Cumrean sybil is close at hand, 
and the lake of Avernus. 

" Facilis descensus Averni " — but we did not go down — we 
did not even go to it. The whole promontory, outside a line 
from the city of Naples to Cumae, is an arid desert of by- 
gone eruption. These eruptions are mostly centuries later 
than the time of Virgil, yet even then the indications were 
such that it required little imagination in him to find in it, 
as he did, the confines of the infernal regions. Then pros- 
perous cities and luxurious villas, in all the splendor of an- 
cient Roman architecture, were all along this short section 



208 PUZZUOLI — POSILIPPO. 

of coast. Here at Puzzuoli — Puteoli — St. Paul, after his 
shipwreck, rested a week with the brethren, who at that early 
period of the new dispensation, and in that corrupt and vo- 
luptuous, and beautiful town, with its magnificent temples of 
idolatry, had embraced the religion which was everywhere 
spoken against. Puzzuoli received its death-blow in the vol- 
canic eruption which reared Monte Nuovo, when it was al- 
most overwhelmed with ashes and scoria — when the sea . 
shrunk 600 feet from the shore, and then rushed back again, 
and when volcanic action had made permanent the pestilen- 
tial malaria. But before that, many centuries, its heathen 
temples and statues had been destroyed, and its glory had 
departed. The marble pavements and even the lofty columns 
of the Serapeon had changed their level some twenty feet be- 
neath the water by the slow subsidence of the shore for ages, 
and by its subsequent rise to dry land by the same almost 
imperceptible degrees. With more time, and at a more 
healthy season, I should have found much gratification in 
looking carefully at the evidences of those wonderful physi- 
cal changes. In a geological point of vieAV they are exceed- 
ingly suggestive of the uncertainty which is inherent in all 
the evidences of time, drawn from physical changes in the 
surface of the earth. 

We returned through the grotto of Posilippo — which is 
a tunnel nearly half a mile long through the mountain of 
Posilippo, and through this tunnel lies the high road. There 
are shafts or ventilating passages to the upper air, and it is 
always lighted with lamps. This and another similar and 
longer tunnel, a little further down the bay, are among the 
most interesting antiquities in Italy, — they are plainly 
works of art, but are of unknown antiquity — many hundred 
years before Christ — but for what purpose or by what me- 
chanical contrivances constructed, it is quite impossible to 
say. They have sometimes been considered as natural arches 



NEW CEMETERY. 209 

— hence their name, grotto — and sometimes as the work of 
magic, only because no other origin can be established. They 
are dark, and dusky, and smothering in the dry days of sum- 
mer, though wide enough for two carriages abreast. Vir- 
gil's tomb is on the hill nearly over the mouth of the grotto. 

The New Cemetery of Naples — the necropolis — for it is 
a vast suburban city of the dead, is quite unlike any other 
cemetery I have ever seen. It looks like a little rural city 
of miniature houses and churches. Quite a large portion of 
the tombs are small chapels, in which the arrangements are 
as various as the tombs. In some ai'e visible shelves, some- 
times above ground, and sometimes below, on which the cof- 
fins of the dead are placed — sometimes with candles burn- 
ing by them, and sometimes the candles are burning by a 
little altar in the chapel, furnished with all the usual ap- 
pointments of an altar. In others the dead are buried out 
of sight, and over them is raised the little chapel. Some 
are mere monuments and sepulchres, apparently placed over 
graves. Most of them have much architectural pretensions, 
and some of tbem, belonging to congregations or confraterni- 
ties, are quite large 

Congregations are associations of individuals for the pur- 
pose of securing for the members of the association respect- 
able burial. They all make contributions and pay annual 
dues, which are devoted to building the monumental struc- 
ture, keeping up its consecrated lights, and paying the fu- 
neral expenses of the members as they die. A principal part 
of this expense consists in the long train of hired mourners, 
dressed in white from the top of the head to the sole of the 
foot, with only two small holes at the eyes through which 
they may see to guide their steps. 

There are also a class of hired mourners, from whose ap- 
pearance you would suppose them to be paupers. They wear 
no masks except their assumed lackadaisical looks, and their 



210 MUSEO BORBONICO- 

hats and cloaks have a rusty and worn-out appearance, ex- 
ceeding seedy and poverty-stricken. These congregations 
are quite numerous, and you often meet their funerals in the 
streets, looking like a walking procession of ghosts. Besides 
these pleasant graves of luxury, there are the common gits 
in which the poor are buried indiscriminately, without dis- 
tinction of age or sex, without the last decencies or rites 
which, by the common consent of mankind, belong to the 
great change from a living soul to dead matter. I did not 
look in upon them. I have long been in the habit of avert- 
ing my eyes from sights which shall fix in the memory loath- 
some and revolting images. No matter how soon such ima- 
ges may be covered over and buried up with newer and more 
agreeable ones, the time is sure to come when these shall be 
worn away, and the revolting pictures will be again reveal- 
ed. I owe it to the striking metaphor of Condillac — read 
thirty years ago, where, speaking of the well-known, but re- 
markable fact, that in age we remember freshly the scenes of 
our youth, while the daily occurrences of advanced years 
are with difficulty recalled, after they have once passed by, 
he says that with the lapse of years our memories are worn 
down to their earliest impressions, thus reproducing the mem- 
ories of our lives, in the reverse order, long after they have 
been once entirely forgotten. 

The Bourbon Museum — Museo Borbonico — of Naples, 
all things considered, is one of the most remarkable and in- 
teresting in the world. It has works of high art, and anti- 
quities, and curiosities, which do not suffer in comparison in 
point of interest, with those which are to be seen in such num- 
bers in Rome, and the other large cities of Europe. There 
are here, doubtless, the finest statues and busts in marble and 
bronze, in the world. So, too, there are here some of the real 
master-pieces of the world, in painting. These great works 
stand out powerfully amidst the vast number of inferior pro- 



POMPEIAN RELICS. 211 

ductions with which they are surrounded. There are nine 
hundred paintings. There are six rooms of sepulchral vases 
— seven large rooms are devoted to small bronzes. The 
collection of ancient glass contains more than four thousand 
specimens of wonderful variety. There are five thousand 
specimens of ancient pottery — sixteen hundred cameos, and 
gems of untold number and value — forty thousand medals 
of all age3. The collection of ancient sculptures occupies 
twelve apartments. These are of course similar to those 
in the royal collections of other cities. 

But in one great class of objects this Museum stands 
alone, — the objects found in the buried cities of Herculane- 
um and Pompeii. They were for years kept by themselves 
in a Museum at Portici, but they have all been removed to 
Naples, and swell the great treasures of the Bourbon Muse- 
um, and add an interest unique and perfectly absorbing — em- 
bracing, as they do, a vast number and complete variety of the 
works of fine and ornamental, useful and homely art, of the 
ancients in the days of the first Caesars. There is spread out 
before you the daily life of the people in their implements 
and utensils, from the simplest vessel of the kitchen to the 
musical instruments of the orchestra — from the tools of the 
homeliest artisan to the complicated and ingenious surgical 
contrivance of modern times, for which patents have been 
granted, as new inventions. No pictures or descriptions 
could so lay open the domestic manners of the Italians, as 
these collections of the very things they handled, from day 
to day, in their avocations and amusements. It is surprising 
to see how closely many of these resemble the correspond- 
ing objects in modern times — some are absolutely identical. 
It is well known that many objects there discovered reveal 
a state of moral depravation and grbssness in the people of 
the most revolting character. Personal ornaments for the 
ladies, and curiosities of the boudoir and the centre table, 



212 



PAPYRI. 



and statuary for the garden and the grove, of exquisite 
workmanship, are expressive of an inconceivable impurity 
of thought and imagination — so much so, that always since 
their deposit in the museum, the agency of ambassadors and 
officers of State, and considerable expense, have become ne- 
cessary to procure admission to that portion of the museum. 
The room of the papyri — the library of charcoal — is ex- 
ceedingly interesting, the books, like sticks of charcoal, be- 
ing rolls of papyrus charred through and through. The 
first that were discovered were destroyed by the workmen, 
on the suposition that they were pieces of charcoal — but 
observing that they were ranged around the apartment in 
presses, the curiosity of the men was excited, and they saw 
some words on the sticks, and soon concluded that it was a 
library, as in fact it was. There were seventeen hundred 
and fifty rolls, seven inkstands, a stylus and its case, and busts 
in bronze of Zeno and Epicurus in this buried library, and 
all were removed first to the museum at Portici, and then to 
Naples. It is curious that it should be possible to unroll 
and decipher, and translate such manuscripts, buried for 
more than 1800 years, and, perhaps, more curious still, that 
no manuscript of any known work has been found among 
them hitherto. They are mostly treatises on Epicurean Phi- 
losophy. They are written in columns and without any punc- 
tuation, or stops, or marks, or spaces of any kind, to indi- 
cate the division of words or sentences. This peculiarity of 
ancient writing has always seemed to me most extraordi- 
nary. I do not see how such bright men could fail to make 
a visible separation of words and sentences. 



EXCURSION TO POMPEII. 

OF course we did not fail to visit Pompeii. Indeed, I 
should not have thought of visiting Naples at all, had 
I not felt that I could not visit Italy and leave it without 
seeing the ruins of Pompeii — and to it we devoted one of 
our earliest days in Naples. We started early in the morn- 
ing, and took the cars for Pompeii — some ten or twelve 
miles. We moved without much rapidity, as the train stops 
frequently at the small towns along the road. The course 
is along the shore of the bay, and around the base of Vesu- 
vius, whose smoking crater is all the while in sight — and 
everything visible is volcanic. The houses in the little cities 
are hardly ten feet high, and have flat roofs, and the streets 
are narrow, the whole constructed evidently so as not to be 
toppled down by earthquakes. The excavations and em- 
bankments reveal the hills of crumbling scoria and the cliffs 
of solidified lava. The lava rock crops out all along, looking 
like a sort of green-stone trap, and in some places they are 
quarrying it, evidently for use. 



214 NAPLES TO POMPEII. 

In the little cities and villages, scattered along this ten miles, 
there are some seventy-five thousand people, and they are 
so often shaken by earthquakes, and scorched by lava, and 
showered by cinders, that it is no wonder that they build 
so lowly and inexpensively. I believe they are as virtuous 
as it is possible for the cheating race of Italians to be on such 
a highway and thoroughfare of sight-seers. Torre del 
Annunziata is the largest of these towns. It is called Tor- 
re for brevity. The Neapolitans have an idle saying, Naples 
sins, and Torre pays for it, intending thus to suggest the in- 
nocence of Torre, as well as the wickedness of Naples — Na- 
ples having never suffered by volcanic eruptions, and Torre 
often. 

We had no time to give to these little towns — curious in- 
deed in themselves — and hurried on to Pompeii. After a few 
. moments' rest, while we secured a guide, we betook ourselves 
to the devoted city, resurrected after a burial of 1800 years' 
duration, and with a constantly renewed interest we wander- 
ed through its ancient streets, and its deserted and roofless 
shops and houses, and temples and theatres. Nothing was at 
all as I expected to see it, furnishing but another instance 
of the utter inadequacy of verbal description to convey a 
just idea of scenes so strange and peculiar, which speak 
only to the eye. 

The railroad depot and hotel are on what was a part of 
the ancient excellent harbor of Pompeii — the shore having 
gained upon the bay a long distance. 

It is only a step from the hotel to within the walls of the 
city. We first made our way about three quarters of a 
mile through open fields of corn, showing a poor soil and 
worse husbandry, to the great amphitheatre, which is at 
about that distance from the other excavations. 

The early history of Pompeii is lost in the fable that as- 
cribes its establishment to the Phenician Hercules. The 



POMPEII. 215 

first we know of it really, historically, is about the begin- 
ning of the Christian era, or a little before, although ic was 
then spoken of as a celebrated city. It was built on the 
shore of the bay, at the mouth of the Sarno, and had a 
magnificent deep water harbor, which made it at the same 
time a Naval Station and the Emporium of a great Com- 
merce. Etymologists, indeed, derive its name from pompeon, 
the Greek word for emporium. It has about three miles of 
circuit, and although originally on the shore of the bay, it 
is now a mile from the water. It had a military " colony " 
under Sylla, and became a Municipium under Augustus, and 
under Nero it was Colonia Romano.. Some of the inscriptions 
speak of it as "the Colony." It was a favorite resort for 
distinguished Eomans. Its situation and surrounding view 
were of surpassing beauty. Seneca resided there. Cicero 
often spoke of its beauties. He had a favorite villa there. 
There he is said to have written his " Offices," and in one 
year to have written there his " Nature of the Gods," 
"Old Age," " Friendship," « Glory" and "Topics." His 
Tusculan and Pompeiian residences were his special delight. 
Pompeii, in the midst of its prosperity, (A. D. 63,) was 
shattered by an earthquake of great power. Then, for the 
first time, Vesuvius was recognized as an active volcano, by 
those who dwelt about its base. Herculaneum and Pompeii 
were almost destroyed. During that year, and often, up to 
A. D. 79, the shocks of repeated earthquakes shattered the 
walls and prostrated the colonnades of the temples, the fo- 
rums, and the Basilicas of the city, and frightened the peo- 
ple away. They, however, soon returned, and commenced 
to rebuild the city with much more magnificence than that 
of the ancient Oscan, Etrurian, and Samnitic ruder struc- 
tures, erected by its earlier inhabitants. It was in the midst 
of the saiisfaction derived from seeing their city renovated 
and beautified by the new constructions, that the first erup- 



216 DEATH OF PLINY. 

tion of Vesuvius, with its indescribable terrors, opened upon 
the devoted cities situated near its southern and south-east- 
ern base — Herculaneurn, Pompeii, and Stabia. Stabia is 
now Casteliamare, a modern village with no signs of its an- 
cient building. Herculaneurn, about one hundred feet below 
the surface, has but a few and limited excavations in its 
subterranean darkness. Pompeii is entirely laid open upon 
the surface, so far as it is excavated, which is only about 
one quarter of the town — after more than one hundred years 
digging. 

In the midst of the ruins of this extraordinary eruption, 
the often told story of the fate of Pompeii has come to my 
mind again with a deeper interest in the whole of the dreadful 
scene, and with an emphasis upon some of the incidents 
which induces me to bring again before you a city raised 
from the grave of nearly two thousand years, familiar as the 
unique phenomenon must be to you. 

We are indebted to the younger Pliny for the only ac- 
count of an eye-witness of the scene. He was at Misenum, 
some twenty miles from Vesuvius — but in full view, as the 
waters of the bay alone intervened. His uncle, the elder 
Pliny, was then in command of the Roman fleet — the neph- 
ew was with him, devoting himself to his studies. At the 
commencement of the eruption — which was accompanied 
by earthquake shocks, the old Admiral determined to cross 
the bay for a better and near view of the novel spectacle. 
There does*not appear to have been any alarm in the minds 
of these Romans, to whom the scene was only a novelty, and 
the young man declining an offer to go with his uncle, and 
preferring to devote the time to his studies — stayed with his 
mother, at Misenum, while the uncle in a galley crossed the 
bay in the afternoon, taking his tablets with him to record 
the phenomena. He arrived at Stabia, in the midst of 
showers of falling ashes and pumice-stones, and flint crum- 



THE ERUPTION. 217 

bled by the heat, and went to the house of a friend, not at 
all alarmed. He took a bath, ate his supper, and went quiet- 
ly to sleep after his fatigue, that with the morning light he 
might make his observations — but the ashes and scoria fall- 
ing so fast, and the rocking of the earthquake being so ter- 
rible, his friend's family — whose fears kept them constantly 
excited — resolved to awake him. He joined them, and after 
a brief consultation, all agreed that there was no safety in 
the houses, shaken by such convulsions, and, perhaps, hardly 
more in the open fields, where the falling stones and cinders 
threatened destruction. They, however, tied pillows on 
their heads with napkins, and took to the fields, in a dark- 
ness perfectly impenetrable, except by the occasional flashes 
of lurid volcanic light. Soon a blast of sulphui'ous and mephi- 
tic air passed over the old Admiral, and he fell down dead. 
It was then day-light by the clock, but there was no light, 
and for three days there was a darkness like that of a closed 
room, where not a ray enters. 

The young man and his mother, at Misenum, fifteen miles 
off, rose late in the morning, to find but a dim and murky 
twilight, and the awful throes of the earthquake — they, too, 
determined to quit that city, and the frightened populace 
crowded after them.* Once out of the way of falling build- 
ings, they halted — when the earthquake seemed to gain new 
force. Their carriages in the open fields could not be kept 
in their places — but rolled back and forth, although the 
wheels were blocked— and the sea seemed to double upon itself 
and suddenly retreat from the shore, while toward the 
mountain hung a black and horrible cloud, now and then 
lighted up by internal flashes, and rendered more dreadful 
by what seemed immense tongues of fire. The cloud swept 
on toward Misenum, bringing with it a slight shower of ashes 
and increasing darkness, and finally, that utter darkness 
which destroyed all vision. Then this flying multitude, in 

10 



218 THE FLEEING POPULACE. 

unfamiliar places, became bewildered. They had but the 
voice and the ear by which to recognize each other and keep 
together. Then, oh ! that wild confusion and shrieking of 
human voices — the plaints of the women, the shouts of 
the men, and the cries of the children — one calling his father, 
another his son, another his wife — in a hurrying, affrighted 
and stifled crowd ! 

If this was the case at Misenum, what was it at Pom- 
peii % — where this darkness and earthquake were of three 
days' duration — where was the centre of the lightnings and 
flames and terrible convulsions — where the showers of vol- 
canic dust and ashes, fine and black, like pulverized coal, 
fell to the depth of ten inches — then came the peltings of 
the pitiless and irritating storm of pumice-stone-gravel 
mixed with large stones, to the depth of seven feet — and 
thus, in alternating showers of ashes and stones and hot wa- 
ter, during these three days, Avas the city filled in its lowest 
cellars, and covered above its highest buildings — the hot 
stones setting fire — the weight crushing the roofs — the earth- 
quake shaking down the walls — the falling ashes and gravel 
Ailing all the passages and streets. 

It is said that the loss of life was small, because so few 
bones have been found. Doubtless, almost all left the city — 
that would be almost the first impulse among the tumbling 
ruins — the streets, dark as it was, would easily guide the 
fleeing populace to the fields outside the walls — but who 
that has floundered through snows three feet deep, even in 
the light of a winter night, can fail to see what was the 
probable fate of a large portion of those panic-stricken and 
crowding thousands, in that smothering dust and sand, and 
heat and drifting ashes, which covered all the fields to the 
depth of many feet — and the darkness more than Egyptian. 
Those fields have never been excavated, and they tell no 
tales of that fearful night of sixty hours. 



THE DISCOVERED DEAD. 219 

Even in the city, in the open places, and in the broad 
streets, many skeletons are found, of persons, perhaps struck 
down by falling stones, perhaps strangled by deadly gases. 
How much may be inferred by a single group ? They found 
the skeleton of a mother with the bones of her little baby 
in her arms, and those of her two larger children, evident- 
ly embracing her ! In despair they had sat down to die to- 
gether — her ear-drops, in the form of a balance, with pearls 
suspended by threads of gold, showed a family, perhaps, of 
the better class. This is true of many of the skeletons 
found in the city. They have rings with finely engraved 
stones, and bracelets and armlets, and ear-drops and neck- 
laces, tasteful in form and rich in character. At the house 
of Diomede, eituated near the bay, he with his servant was 
found in the yard, near the gate toward the water, his key 
in his hand and his servant with a bag of money. It is com- 
mon to say that he was leaving his family to their fate and 
saving himself. I more charitably suppose that he had the 
price with him with which he hoped to procure the means 
to transport them by water. His family were in the cellar, 
locked in, not to destroy but to save them. We went 
through the cellar to see his wine-pots, still standing there — 
and the scene of the family death. It was dimly lighted by 
small cellar windows, half buried — and it was through 
these windows that a more frightful death than starvation 
overtook them. After a while, by some strange cause, the 
volcanic ashes was forced in through these windows and 
mixed with water — perhaps torrents belched from the burn- 
ing crater — perhaps the water of the bay — for the sea rush- 
ed frantically back and forth — and there — perhaps by a 
steady rise — maybe by fitful swells — that subterranean re- 
fuge filled higher and higher. They retreated to the highest 
part of the cellar near one of the doors — it might be opened ! 
desperate hope ! — and there they were strangled in its filthy 



220 THE TEMPLE OP ISIS. 

ooze. You see there now — on the cellar wall where they 
stood crowded together — a slight discoloration like their 
shadows. When the lapse of eighteen hundred years had 
dried that mud, and the flesh had wasted and gone, and the 
bones had fallen together, there were the casts of the heav- 
ing bosoms, and round, graceful forms of high-bred ladies — 
even the print of the fabric of surpassing fineness, with 
which they were clad, and the draperies which, after the 
manner of the ancients, in their last moments they had 
drawn over their faces. Their tresses still hung about their 
fleshless skulls, and their teeth were entire — and upon their 
bones hung collars and hoops of gold, and rings and pins, 
and engraved stones, emeralds and amethysts, &c. , &c. — 
and by them was a magnificent candelabra which they had 
brought down, to light up their solemn and desolate hiding- 
place — while doubtless they were waiting for the return of 
Diomede to open the door to deliver them. They were 
eighteen in all. In other houses they had doubtless retreat- 
ed to upper rooms. In the chambers of the forum nundi- 
narium were sixty-three skeletons. 

In one of the chambers of the temple of Isis was the 
skeleton of a priest still at the table — evidently determined 
to live out his life — his table was covered with egg shells 
and chicken bones and ham bones — his wine-pot and goblet 
were broken on the ground — probably dashed in desperation, 
after he had drained them. In another room, close by, was 
another skeleton of a priest, braced as it were against the 
wall, where, with an axe in his hand, he had apparently 
broken through two walls in his desperate efforts to escape, 
but the third was too much for his exhausted powers. They 
both died there in the secret and mj'Sterious recesses of that 
cheating temple — perhaps there was their laboratory and 
machine-room, where they wrought out the liquefactions 
and touched the springs of the winking madonnas and other 
trickery of the IMae worship. 



THE POPE AT THE TEMPLE OF ISIS. 221 

Pope Pius IX., during his exile in 1849, visited the ruins 
of Pompeii, and is the first Pope who has ever visited them. 
In the official account of that visit it is stated that the at- 
tention of his Holiness was singularly fixed by the temple 
of Isis. Well it might be — for there was laid open the 
rooms of their mysteries, the private doors and staircases 
by which the priests wrought their pretended miracles, and 
through the statue of the Goddess pronounced their cheating 
oracles. Much in the Roman Catholic rites and ceremonies 
and practices is easily traced to the more ancient similar 
practices of the heathen idolatries which Christianity sup- 
planted. 

If ever the remaining three fourths of the city shall be 
excavated, thousands of the dead may be found instead of 
the hundred or two already discovered, and still other and 
greater objects of interest may be revealed. The digging 
has now gone on more than one hundred years, always 
slowly. To finish it at the same rate will take three hun- 
dred years more, before which, it may be buried again. 
Vesuvius has lost none of its activity in eighteen hundred 
years. These excavations show eight distinct strata, vary- 
ing in thickness from two inches to seven feet, and exhibit 
the strongest evidence of the action of water as well as of 
fire — and yet the whole was the work of three days only — 
a fact never to be forgotten when we would infer great 
lapse of time from great physical changes. 

As I said, we began at the Amphitheatre, which is still 
in excellent preservation, perhaps more so than any other 
ruin here. As soon as we left the hotel we were joined by 
porters carrying chairs fastened on hand-barrows, by which 
two persons carry, very safely and comfortably, a single person 
in a chair, and they offered to carry us for a trifling sum. 
We preferred walking, and we returned to the hotel, both in 
good condition, having found the day ten times more profit- 



222 THE AMPHITHEATRE. 

able and agreeable than we could have done, carried about 
in the more luxurious style of their palaquin chairs. But 
to the Amphitheatre again ! 

We had seen theatres and amphitheatres older, in fact, 
and more venerable in their appearance than this. Their 
toppling walls, overgrown seats, and hardly discernible pas- 
sages, were deeply interesting — so suggestive of the lapse of 
years, and the marks of Time's effacing fingers on the 
spectacle and the spectators — but this one was more inter- 
esting in suggesting the annihilation of Time. Two thou- 
sand years ago, it was hardly fresher than now. The stone 
seat is as sharp, and the passages are almost as clean as if 
just swept for an audience — the walls of the arena stand 
strong in their beautiful masonry, and the inscriptions are 
as distinct as when gladiators and wild beasts delighted the 
crowd in their brutalizing sport. There was, on either side 
of the entrances, the disrobing rooms for the human per- 
formers, and the dens for the wild beasts. The seats rise 
one behind the other, sweeping entirely round the circle — 
or rather the ellipse — for it is elliptical in form, its long 
diameter being a little more than four hundred feet, and its 
shorter about three hundi'ed — seating about twenty thou- 
sand comfortably. This leaves immense space under the 
seats for the necessary rooms. There is no roof, the seats 
and the arena being all open to the sky — in hot weather the 
spectators were protected by awnings stretched over them 
all. A portion was for the ladies alone — another portion 
for the higher class of spectators, and another for the mis- 
cellaneous audience. Each spectator had his seat and his 
appointed space, to which he was admitted by a ticket of 
bronze or bone, with the number of his seat upon it — and 
sometimes the name of the play. Great numbers of these 
tickets are preserved. The seats nearest to the arena appear 
to have been protected by an inner railing, which, of course, 



SPECTACLES. 223 

time has eaten away. As the drop-scene and proscenium 
of our theatres are decorated with paintings, so the wall 
which surrounded the arena of this was covered with in- 
scriptions and paintings. 

The performances commenced at sunrise, and continued 
1,11 day, with a recess for dinner, and the higher classes 
were as much delighted by the bloody scenes as the less cul- 
tivated rabble. It is said of the Emperor Claudius, that at 
daybreak, when the audience assembled, they found him in 
his seat, and when they left for their dinner he kept his 
place, apparently almost fascinated by the inhuman fights of 
beasts and men — giving no quarter.- One of the exits of the 
arena was used solely for carrying out the lacerated bodies 
of the dead. This is one of the bills of the performance — 

THIRTY PAIRS OF 

GLADIATORS 

WILL FIGHT AT 

SUNRISE. 

What a sight it must have been to see those thirty hand-to- 
hand duels in that arena, with the varying and fluctuating 
fortunes of the strife — all fighting for life — 

"Butchered to make a Roman holiday." 

Here is a play-bill of another sort — 

ON THE OCCASION OF THE 

OPENING OF THE BATHS, 

THESE WILL BE PEBFORMANOES BY 

THE TROOP OF GLADIATORS 

OF 

G. A. NIGIDIUS MAJOR. 



THEEE WILL BE THE 

FIGHTING WITH WILD BEASTS AND WRESTLING. 



Awnings will be spread, and Perfumes will be scattered 
in the Amphitheatre. 



224 



DWELLINGS. 



Besides the Amphitheatre, there were several theatres in 
Pompeii for the representations cf plays, but none are in 
so good preservation as the Amphitheatre. Such was the 
fondness of the people for spectacles, that nothing can be 
more probable than at the time of the destruction of the 
city, the fatal eruption found them at the theatres, though, 
after the danger was imminent, there would be time to 
escape. Six skeletons were all that were found there — per- 
haps gladiators dead or disabled, who could not escape — per- 
haps some who were trampled down by the escaping crowd 
— perhaps some who took refuge there from the narrow- 
streets and falling walls — to be hemmed in and smothered 
by the drifting ashes. 

For the residue of our stay we strolled through the tem- 
ples, and streets, and forums, and public places — the dwell- 
ings, the shops, the villas, and graveyards, that — unveiled to 
the light of day after nearly two thousand years of undis- 
turbed repose — lvave thrown so much light upon the domes- 
tic manners and daily life of the Italians of those days. In 
what elegance and luxury lived the wealthy and distin- 
guished, and in what ease and abundance lived, apparently, 
the whole people. The house of Pansa is about one hundred 
feet front and two hundred feet deep — the villa of Diomede 
is even larger than that. Others of less size exhibit — in 
their style and finish, their mosaics and paintings — a more 
exquisite taste and a more refined and extravagant luxury. 
If we take the various objects of taste and luxury which have 
been discovered in these resurrected ruins, and supply what 
inevitable decay has consumed, and thus restore and refur- 
nish one of these magnificent mansions, as the imagination 
is compelled to do, we are forced to exclaim, " What must 
have been the style of the princely patrician dwellings of 
imperial Rome, if this is what is found in the small provin- 
cial business-town of Pompeii'?" — evidently a second or third- 
rate town — a shop-keeping town — for the fronts of these 



MORALS. 225 

princely mansions consist of small shops for various trades, 
as do also houses in street after street. I was surprised to 
find that what elsewhere is built of travertine, and sculptured 
in marble, is here — not unfrequently — built of brick and cov- 
ered and ornamented in stucco — indeed, this is true of most 
of the ornamental architecture. In some of the public 
buildings are striking departures from correct taste — while 
the smaller ornamental objects and works of art, wrought in 
metal and preserved in the museum, exhibit a taste and fin- 
ish in chasing, and carving, and grace, of such exquisite 
beauty — even where the object itself is an obscenity of the 
grossest character — that modern art strives, almost in vain, 
to equal it. Other evidence, too, of the grossness of their 
manners, are phallic sculptures in the solid stone on the 
outside of the still standing walls of houses, inscribed hie 
habitat fdicitas — thus indicated as devoted to sensual licen- 
tiousness — without the privacy with which even coarseness 
usually shrouds such practices in all civilized countries. 
The frequency and variety of these phallic exhibitions, show 
plainly that the filthy rites of the Babylonian, Syrian, Phoe- 
nician, and Corinthian Venus — another name for Isis — had 
here brought forth their proper fruit in public and private 
sensuality and debauchery. 

In this respect, this Bay of Naples has an accursed immor- 
tality of vice and of the vengeance of Heaven, not unlike 
that of Sodom of old. Baia3 — the mest elegant and cultivated 
of watering places— Seneca calls the diversorium of vices. 
Clodius threw it in the face of Cicero, that he loved so pol- 
luted a spot, and Cicero, himself, in his oration for Ccelius, 
mentions the libid>nes, amoves adulteria Baias actas. Roman 
matrons, who went there with the reputation of Penelope, 
left, with that of Helen. Dancing girls made their midnight 
orgies in the grottoes along the shores — 

" Littora, qua facrant castis inimica puellis." 

10* 



226 THE STKEETS. 

Capri, on the other side, in the mouth of the bay — washed on 
all sides by the pure waters of the sea, and always fanned by 
its balmiest breezes — was no less polluted by the Spintrian 
and Scillarian abominations, which made Capri the sales 
arcanarum libidinum, and which were sent down to future 
generations in all the loathsomeness and infamy of the Spin- 
trian medals. Pompeii, and Baiae, and Capri still skirt that 
beautiful bay, but how the footsteps of an angry God seem to 
have trodden them down, even as Sodom and Gomorrah are 
set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal 
fire. Bai«, and Pompeii, and Capri, were in their glory 
and their shame in the midst of the cultivated intelligence 
and refinement of the glorious Augustan period of the 
Koman Empire. So true it is, that the mere cultivation of 
the intellect does not necessarily bring with it true moral 
cultivation. 

The streets of Pompeii are very narrow — the widest 
perhaps thirty feet, most of them much less — deeply cut in 
the pavement by the wheels which, in streets so narrow, 
ran pretty much always on the same track. They are 
paved with lava stone. The road of the street is much 
lower than the side-walk, and at the crossings high blocks 
of stone, eight or ten inches high, are placed to step upon — 
indicating that at times the streets ran deep with water. 
These blocks are so placed that they did not interfere with 
the wheels of the carriages. Along all the business streets are 
the blacksmith shop and the bakery, and the pie shop and 
the drug store, with pills, powders and plasters still there, 
and the soap boilery — and the tavern and the drinking shop, 
with its brazier for hot drinks, and its glasses, and the stable, 
with the head bones of a mule, with the bit still in its bony 
jaws — and the studio of the sculptor, and the shop for art- 
ist's colors, etc., etc. — all sorts of shops for daily wants — 
including a shop for phallic amulets — their use indicated by 



JULIA FELIX. 227 

unquestionable signs. The houses are not numbered, 
but the name of the occupant was on the entrance of each 
house. The commercial character of the place, and the 
riches of the citizens, appears from a bill, on a wall, of shops 
to let — -" Julia Felix, daughter, of Spurius, offers to let, for 
five consecutive years, the following portion of her property ; 
A bathing room, a venerium, and nine hundred shops, with show 
balconies — pergulm — and upper rooms." Nine hundred stores 
to let ! This notice was followed by the usual initials, 
probably an ancient form kept up after its substance had 
become a dead letter. S. Q. D. L. E. N. C., being the 
initials of the following woi'ds: "Si quis domi lenocinium 
exerceat non conducito" — if the house be used as a place for 
prostitution, the lease will be void. 

The house of this Julia Felix must have been one of great 
beauty in its structure and ornament, as well as in its fur- 
niture. It was discovered in 1756, in the earliest excava- 
tions. She was evidently a worshipper of Isis, as her house 
contained a little temple, or chapel to that divinity. The 
liberality of wealthy citizens is shown by inscriptions on 
some of the public edifices. Numerius Popidius Celsius 
rebuilt, at his own expense, the temple of Isis, which had 
been destroyed by the earthquake, A. D. 63. M. Holconius 
Rufus and M. H. Celer built, at their own expense, the 
Crypt, the tribunal and the theatre to embellish the colony. 
Eumachia, a priestess, built at her own expense, the Chal- 
cidicum, the Crypt, and the porticoes of Concord. Marcus 
Tullius built from its foundation, at his own expense, the 
Temple of Fortune. So through modern Italy, private 
munificence has done much to add to the public edifices of 
religion and of superstition — a hereditary characteristic — 
coming down from heathendom. 

We commenced, as I have said, at the Amphitheatre, and 
the Pope ended his visit at the same place. It would have 



228 THE PAPAL BENEDICTION. 

been one of rny most interesting sights in Italy had I been 
present then to see that striking papal scene. The news of 
his visit had brought together the people from all the region 
round about, and when he arrived at the Amphitheatre a 
great multitude was there to receive him and to implore his 
blessing, and the air rang with the shouts, "Long live hi3 
Holiness ! " — '• Long live the King ! " as he descended from 
his chariot, with the cardinals who were with him. The 
view from that Amphitheatre is one of the most magnificent 
in the world. He is said to have been rapt with the won- 
derful panorama, embracing Vesuvius, the far off city of 
Naples and its environs, and the bay and the islands, and 
with the associations of his most wonderful situation — the 
High Priest of Christianity — standing amidst thousands of 
his faithful worshippers, seated upon the same seat in that 
resurrected heathen circus which the idolatrous and bloody 
Pompeiians had occupied two thousand years ago, when they 
shouted in their murderous sport. " Profoundly moved 
by the unexpected and wonderful scene," says the Secretary 
of the Royal Museum, " the sacred Vicar of Christ, all ra- 
diant with glory and majesty, mounted quietly to the highest 
seat of the Amphitheatre, and appearing suddenly on the 
summit, saluted the people affectionately, then composing 
himself for a brief look to Heaven for divine assistance, he 
gave to that immense assembly his pontifical blessing ! " 
To devout Roman Catholics, to the unprejudiced and chari- 
table of all denominations, who could look upon it as an ab- 
stract Christian scene — a comparison of points of history — in 
powerful contrast — two thousand years apart — exhibiting 
the triumph and the progress of Christianity, it was surely 
a scene long to be remembered — probably never to occur 
again. Farewell to Pompeii ! 

I had determined that the season was too late to think of 
toiling to the crater of Vesuvius, but being desirous of seeing 



ERUPTIONS OF VESUVIUS. 229 

something of the mountain, and the paths and the deposits 
of some of the later eruptions, finding that that could be 
done more easily on this side of the mountain, where you 
can ride in a carriage far up, over the indurated fields of 
what was once liquid fire, rolling its deep and majestic tor- 
rent down the mountain sides, I hired a carriage to take us 
up to the lava of the eruption of 1850, one of the most 
striking which has ever occurred — numerous as they are 
and wonderful as they have been. Vesuvius is one of the 
few volcanoes that seem to be immortal and inexhaustible. 
Its recorded eruptions are in the following years : A. D. 
79! which destroyed Pompeii— 203, 472! 512, 685, 1036, 
1049, 1139, 1306, 1500, 1631! 1660, 1682, 1694, 1696, 
1698, 1701, 1707, 1712, 1720, 1728, 1730, 1737, 1751, 
1754, 1758, 1760, 1766! 1767, 1770, 1776, 1779! 1784, 
1786, 1787, 1793-4! 1804, 1805, 1809, 1812, 1813, 1817, 
1820, 1822, 1828, 1831, 1834, 1838, 1845, 1847, 1850! 
The most remarkable being those designated by exclamation 
marks. 

In 1850, on the 7th February, the southeast side of the 
cone of the mountain opened and poured out a body of lava 
which separated into three streams, and thus descended the 
mountain-side. The principal stream was a mile and a half 
wide, and twelve feet deep. When it entered a forest, as 
the fiery stream swept around the green trees, soon steam 
hissed from every possible orifice, till, unable to find sufficient 
vent, the trees exploded with a loud noise, and w r ere finally 
entirely consumed in a stream of flame, shooting up like 
spires of fire. The stream of lava covered an area of 
about nine square miles, and during the whole night the 
mountain was enveloped in a shower of red hot scoria, and 
large stones shooting up and falling in various curves, and 
producing the effect of fireworks of almost infinite range 
and splendor, in the midst of darkness only made more 



230 Vesuvius. 

visible and striking by those flaming projectiles and that 
nine-miles lake of fire and brimstone — what a sight ! I 
was driven over bad roads, with poor horses, in a rickety 
carriage — the best I could get at Pompeii — and by a rascally 
driver — tugging along up till we got to about the middle o£ 
the nine miles of lava, now cold and desert and barren. 
Here our horses seemed to take a look around, as their feet 
sunk into the sun-heated sand up to their fetlocks, as much 
as to say, "What is the use? It is all just like this for 
miles further up, and we won't go any further " — I thought 
it was a contrived plan between them and the driver — they 
would not go a step further — so we alighted and walked 
about the lava to examine it, and to take a view from our 
elevation of the landscape stretching off below and around 
us. 

Those fields of lava are now fields of volcanic sand, lying 
in knolls and hillocks, and winrows, and little valleys, and 
consist of sand and small gravel, quite small and angular, 
the whole having a yellowish -greenish-grey color, much re- 
sembling in appearance weather-beaten and disintegrated 
or crushed serpentine. After half an hour or so, our horses 
heads were turned down toward the bay, and they trotted 
us comfortably down to Torre del Annunciata, where we 
took the cars for Naples. 



NAPLES TO FLORENCE. 

AFTER a few hours drive about the shops of Naples to 
look at the beautiful fabrics of Neapolitan art, in lava 
and jewelry, terra cotta statuary and charming little sketch- 
es in oil colors, and laying in what little purchases we chose 
to make as mementos of the city, we determined to leave 
Naples and set our faces to the north, by the steamer to sail 
in the afternoon. 

We had looked at the Bay from our hotel — from the rear 
of the city — from the low level of the Mergellina and the 
bluffs of Posilippo — from the shore all along to Pompeii, and 
from the arid slopes of Vesuvius, and we did not regret hav- 
ing reserved our panoramic look at the surrounding shores 
from the water, till we should survey them from our steam- 
er as we should pass out on our way home — for when we 
double Cape Miseno, Ave shall have reached our most south- 
erly point, and shall henceforward be continually bearing to 
the northward and generally westward, and nearer and 
nearer to that home from which Ave have hitherto been de- 
parting from day to day. 



232 LEAVING NAPLES- 

Early in the afternoon — our early lunch finished — our 
bill paid — and our douceurs all bestowed — we took our car- 
riage to depart, with a polite and affectionate perfunctory 
bow from the old porter, and passing by the Royal Palace 
and the Castel Nuovo, we were set down on the molo grande 
— great wharf — at a suitable distance from which lay the 
Bosphore, in which we were to embark and take our last look 
at Naples. After more multifarious and troublesome forms 
and exactions than I had encountered anywhere else — being 
called back several times — we were set on board the steam- 
er in a small boat, and were soon under-way down through 
the bay, to take a panoramic view of whose beauties, Ave 
kept on deck. The afternoon was as clear and transparent 
as we have ever seen it in Italy — the water was glassy and 
mirror-like as far as the eye could reach, and, as we looked 
back, the tremulous shadows of the city, the Castle del Ovo 
and of Vesuvius, reflected in the bay, seemed to darken 
the green water, and as we skirted along the Mergellina, 
down toward Nicida, and passed that small tower-like is- 
land — its sides and the bluff shores of Posilippo and the 
villa of Lucullus, close on our right, were painted almost as 
sharply and truly in their shadows in the wave as in their 
reality in the upper air. All the various and beautiful shore 
on the left from the Chiaia and the Villa Beale all the way 
round to Cape Carena was in full view — five-and-twenty 
miles — taking in the smoking summit and the slopes of Ve- 
suvius quite down to the Bay — Portici — Resina — Torre del 
Greco — Torre del Annunciata — Castelamare and Sorrento 
and the mountains beyond, and Capri, with their bays and 
their promontories, and their settlements and villas. In the 
low and far-off horizon, directly in our path, lay Procida 
and Ischia, becoming more and more distinct in the agree- 
able haze which lies upon an Italian horizon and into which 



NAPLES. 233 

we seemed to be floating. We deviated from our course 
to pass more closely Pozzuoli and Baiae and other objects on 
the western shores of the Bay of Pozzuoli, emerging from 
which we doubled Cape Miseno, ran through the strait 
of Procida, and were now outside of the islands and on 
the open sea, and we made our parting bow to Naples, with 
gratitude for its pleasant memories for all our remaining 
years. 

Naples, older than Pome, called by Horace otiosa Neapo- 
lis — by Ovid in olio natam Parthenopen — in all ages the 
abode of repose and pleasure, has been, along through the 
ages, illustrious as the birth-place of many eminent men, and 
the residence of many others. Cicero and Seneca both 
characterize it as the mother of studies — Virgil and Seneca 
and Boccacio and Pontanus and Varro and Dio and Porta 
and Colonna and Fontana made it their home. Paterculus 
the historian Statius the Epic, Majus the philologist, San- 
nazar the poet, Borilli the mathematician, Gravina the jur- 
isconsult, Salvator Kosa the painter, Bernini the architect, 
Pergolesus, a great musical composer at the age when others 
go to school, who died at the age of twenty-two as he finish- 
ed the last verse of the Stabat Mater, his masterpiece — these 
were all natives of this voluptuous and idle city. So much 
more their glory that they resisted the tempting charms of 
the sirens that chanted their choruses and spread their 
beauties all abroad on the shores and islands of that bay, 
renowned for its natural beauty thousands of years ago 
as now, and for the patrician and imperial villas, then in 
all their perfection, now hardly discoverable ruins, the lofty 
temples of sensual, yet intellectual heathenism, and the 
luxurious and voluptuous watering-places, looking out from 
the shores upon the quiet waters of that almost land-locked 
basin, described in miniature by Virgil as the Lybian port 



234 THE BAY OF NAPLES. 

where iEneas entered with his shattered fleet in the familiar 
passage — 

Est in secessu longo locus, * » * 

* * Hie fessas non vinculo, naves 
UUa tenent, unco non alligat ancora morsu. 

.<En. I. 159-160. 

The weary ships may on that tranquil tide, 
Without their anchors or their hawsers ride. 

Virgil wrote a portion of his poem at Naples, and if from 
the " school of Virgil " then his eye from that spot com- 
manded the whole of perhaps the finest view of the whole 
bay — seeming, from that point, entirely shut in by Ischia 
and Procida on one hand, and on the other by Capri — that 
half-filled bowl which made the ancient geographers, Greek 
as well as Latin, call it the crater. It is in its size, that this 
bay exceeds all others celebrated for their beauties. It is 
near thirty miles in its longest diameter. The strait be- 
tween the Promontory of Sorento, Cape Minerva, and Capri 
at the South is about three miles — between Cape Miseno 
and Procida and between Procida and Ischia at the South- 
west is about the same distance, and between Ischia and 
Capri is near, twenty miles. All these promontories and 
islands are great break-waters standing high out of the wa- 
ter and sheltering the whole bay from the storm and the sea. 
All the vessels of the world, almost, might lie safely in this 
magnificent basin. 

There are other bays of great beauty — several in our own 
country which were called to mind as we sailed along — 
miniatures suggested by this bay — the bay and harbor of 
New- York — your own beautiful bay, including the 
islands at the south, and the headlands north and south — the 
still smaller bay of Newburgh in the Hudson river. They 
are a little like this in small — as nearly as a bird-cage resem- 
bles St. Peter's — but this bay of Naples is itself alone in the 
actual landscape, so soft, so mild, so dreamy in all its beauty, 



SIIOKES OF THE BAY. 235 

which ever way you look, that your eyes seem to float over 
a panorama of the choicest compositions of Claude. You 
are absorbed by the quiet perceptions of present beauty, and 
the associations of those ancient times, when the greatest 
classic celebrities — heroes of peace and heroes of war — poets, 
historians, philosophers, statesmen, generals, and emperors — 
were at home on its shores, or sought princely relaxation in 
those almost fabulous villas and places of corrupt, and sensual, 
though refined enjoyment, in the thronged and voluptuous 
watering-places which were resorted to from all Italy. So, too, 
other associations drive away the images of beauty and the 
scene becomes sublime, when from the now silent smoke of Ve- 
suvius your mind sweeps round the horizon of this vast bay, 
and thinks only of its great size, and the times and the scenes 
when the whole peninsula rocked like the very waves, in the 
throes of earthquakes, and when the islands and the promon- 
tories first reared their volcanic heads from the boiling sea, 
and when fire and brimstone, a horrible tempest, were rain- 
ed upon devoted cities, and swept in torrents of fire across 
the plains, and have left their record in barren fields, in pes- 
tilential marshes, in mephitic caverns, and in crumbling 
mountains of volcanic tufa and almost bottomless quarries of 
indurated lava. I believe there is no doubt that there are 
subterranean cavernous communications between Ischia and 
the Phlegean fields, under the bay, the capes, and the islands 
— some fifteen or twenty miles — and the smothered but still 
smoking fires of the Solfatara have a manifest sympathy with 
Vesuvius — distant about as far — in a line passing directly 
through the city of Naples. Will all these and the extinct 
craters, extending from Cuma? to Posilippo, again resume 
their awful activity and explode those vaulted caverns % The 
time may come when Naples shall pay for her own sins. 
Who can wonder that the inhabitants here shudder at every 
rumbling in Vesuvius, and look aghast when the starting 



236 NAPLES TO CIVITA VECCHIA. 

flames remind them of their danger? and who can cease to 
wonder that, when a city or village is buried, another is soon 
built, perhaps on the same spot, and the lazy Italian sings 
and dances as usual, without a thought of the danger, till it 
is almost too late to escape ? It is his home and his 
country. 

Once outside the bay we looked about the decks and cab- 
ins of our snug little steamer to glance at our fellow passen- 
gers. We found the vessel crowded to its utmost capacity 
with passengers of novel diversity. Besides Americans — 
they are everywhere — and Englishmen, ditto — and French 
and Italians — there were Turks and Arabs, Greeks and Ar- 
menians. Our vessel ran in connection with the lines to 
Egypt, and Constantinople, and Greece, and Syria, and there 
were families, long resident in the East, now returning with 
their little ones and their barbaric servants. Most striking 
of all, we had the Patriarch of the Syrian Catholics — with 
his beard reaching to his belt — in his oriental sarcedotal cos- 
tume, with attendant priests, bound to Rome to celebrate the 
Corpus Domini at St. Peter's — a ceremony of extraordinary 
solemnity and splendor. The Patriarch was a man of fine 
appearance, of becoming dignity, and gravity, and of sim- 
plicity, and modesty, and freedom from pretension, easy of 
access, and easy in manner and address. We had beautiful 
weather, and no sickness, and so were able to enjoy the 
elegant and sumptuous dinner of six courses in the cabin — 
served with the rich and beautiful appointments, and in the 
style of a private entertainment. 

We had a fine upper room with a window — which was 
great good fortune in such a crowded vessel — and we slept as 
well as we could desire. We rose early to take the open air 
of heaven, and found the deck covered with temporary beds, 
still occupied by those who had been thus obliged to sleep 
under the sky. 



CIVITA VECCHIA. 237 

The decks cleaned up, and the cabin set to rights, we 
were offered a cup of tea or coffee at about seven o'clock, and 
at nine a dejeuner a la fourchette — meat breakfast — of several 
kinds of meat, and game, and fruits, and wine, but no tea 
or coffee. The voyage was a delightful one in every 
respect. 

We stopped and lay at Civita Vecchia most of the day, 
for we are now on the same track back. I went ashore to sell 
some Roman paper money which I had in my hands on leav- 
ing Rome and which I could not use in Naples nor any 
where else except in Roman territory — it will not pass at 
all elsewhere — and I returned immediately on board to sit 
on deck and lazily look at what passed in sight. There was 
a religious procession — perhaps the Corpus Domini for Civita 
Vecchia — passed through the streets and under some of the 
arches of the quays — and gave for the moment a look of in- 
terest to the dirty old city. Here too we saw infants 
trussed up like papooses on our western frontiers, and close 
by us on the water lay a small boat with two or three laz- 
zaroni-looking boatmen and a lad about seventeen, who was 
naked except a small rag about his middle. He busied him- 
self for hours diving in about fifteen feet water to pick up 
the pennies that were thrown overboard from our steamer 
for him to dive for. Intermediate the pennies, he sat on 
the thwarts of the boat, sometimes so much chilled that his 
limbs trembled and his teeth chattered, although it was sum- 
mer. No doubt the fellows along the shore envied him his 
mine of money. Thus our day wore away to three o'clock, 
when we hooked on the engine and steamed up the coast for 
Leghorn. The most interesting objects on the coast that 
we saw, were those striking Martello towers, built in ages 
by-gone, as defences against the Mediterranean Corsairs. 
When the sun went down there was not a breath of air to 
ripple the water, and the sea lay as glassy and bright in his 



238 ELBA. 

glancing evening rays as a sea of liquid silver. There were 
islands all around us, near and farther off, among which was 
Elba, directly before us. It was really a scene of glory. 
I sat and gazed upon it till it faded away, and I could dis- 
tinguish hardly an object except the light from the light- 
house on Elba, which, by its long thread of reflected light, 
led the eye constantly to that prison of the great Corsican — 
Corsica itself hardly out of sight. What a mad idea it was 
to think of confining a man of his powei*s and resources on 
such an island, in such a place — accessible from every di- 
rection — and communicating easily with Italy and France, 
which were filled with followers and friends of abundant 
resources, of desperate bravery, and of the most devoted and 
romantic loyalty. Musing upon his history I went to my 
rest and woke just outside of Leghorn, where we had lain 
to the latter part of the night, because of the rocks near 
the harbor. 

Leghorn is a free city to get into, but no freer to get out 
of than other continental cities. There were the same 
amount of custom-house examinations as elsewhere, which, 
however, gave us no particular trouble. "We took our seats 
in the cars, and as far as Pisa, passed through the same 
scenes as when here before, except that the fields were more 
matured, the festoons of vines that hung from tree to tree 
across the plains were richer and more luxuriant, and the 
harvest began to be visible. At Pisa everything was get- 
ting ready for the great festival of the city which was to take 
place the next day and evening, when the day was to be a 
gala of rejoicing, and in the evening fireworks in every pos- 
sible variety were to shed their dazzling and romantic radi- 
ance over the city and the river and the plain. On the oc- 
casion of their festivals to their patron saints — a sort of natal 
festival of the Italian cities — the people of all sorts flock thi- 
ther from every quarter, and fun and frolic are the order of the 



LEGHORN TO FLORENCE. 239 

day and night. It would have been a good opportunity to 
see one of those festivals — for it was said to be exceedingly 
fine — a thousand went down from Florence in the last train — 
but we determined not to stop in such a crowd, novelty as 
it was. We could not speak the language — we did not know 
the customs — we had no acquaintances — and a thousand 
accidents might happen to us at such a time, in a place where 
we had not the least local knowledge. So we kept straight 
on through Pisa and enjoyed a most beautiful ride up the 
valley of the Arno — abounding in beautiful landscapes. — 
Villages or little cities are passed at short intervals — the ru- 
ral portions are finely cultivated, and country houses and vil- 
las dot the fields and the hills — and when the cars ran by 
the river side, the strange looking river boats of the Arno, 
with their parti-colored sails and the odd-looking rig of a 
triangular out sail added their novelty to the scene, every 
part of which was of exceeding beauty — most especially so 
as we approached Florence, and rolled on to the depot in the 
Cascine, the great fashionable park of the Florentines, whose 
drives and walks are worthy of so famous a city. 



TUSCANY FLORENCE. 

TTTE were greatly refreshed with our first look at Flor- 
V V ence. With nothing fresh or new or American, in 
the midst of so much that is unlike anything we have in our 
country — so much that is so beautiful in nature and art — 
and all so free from any air of newness — from any parvenu 
ostentation or snobbish or who-but-us-ish luxurious vulgar- 
ity — there was more than in any place we had seen on the 
Continent to make us feel like home. I can hardly divine 
what it is in the air of the town and the people which made 
it all the time seem to me like an American town, yet so it 
was. It is doubtless in part to be attributed to the com- 
parative absence of priests and beggars — to the universal 
appearance of activity, industry and tolerable thrift which 
pervades the people. 

The manufacture of straw braid, for what we call Leg- 
horn hats — because shipped from Leghorn, and what the 
French more properly call paille d'ltalie — Italian straw — 
is a great industrial resource of the people in and about 



STRAW MANUFACTURE. 241 

Florence. All the way up from Leghorn, through the valley 
of the Arno, and all around the city and its environs, the 
peasant women and children seem to bvisy themselves con- 
stantly with braiding this straw. Wherever you see them, 
their stack of straw and their ball of straw-braid and their 
busy fingers are sure to attract your attention. Having 
braided the straw, they sell the braid to those who manufac- 
ture the hats — some of which are of most surprising fine- 
ness. We went into most of the shops in the via de Porte 
Rossa — a street principally devoted to this kind of goods — 
and were much pleased to see the work in its various stages. 
Being summer time, the straw was much worn by all classes 
of the people, the most striking exhibition of it being the 
enormous flats worn by the Florence flower-girls, who con- 
stitute a peculiar feature of out-door city life there. The 
first time you go out after your arrival in the city, you are 
sure to be met by a flower-girl, with bouquets of flowers — 
herself neatly enough but plainly dressed, and wearing a 
Leghorn flat of the very largest size — and with a dashing, 
free and easy gait, she trips up to you — with a toss of her 
head throwing up her hat-front — and offers you her flowers, 
and begs you to accept them and will herself accept no pay 
for them. If you accept them, she considers you one of 
her acquaintances in that line, and expects to keep you 
supplied with fresh flowers as long as you stay, and before 
you leave she expects a handsome present from you. 

This straw manufacture is a large branch of the trade in 
Tuscany, giving profitable employment to great numbers of 
the female population in the cities and villages and through 
the rural districts — a pleasant industry which does not shut 
them up in factories, but is performed in their own dwell- 
ings. I mention the straw manufacture, because, in spite of 
us, we were compelled to observe it. There are many 
other kinds of manufacture which are prosperous here — silk, 

11 



242 AGRICULTURE AND TENANTRY. 

woollen, hardware, etc. — but they did not come particularly 
under my observation and I let them pass. The alabaster 
and marble manufactures are known everywhere. 

Their agriculture seems to be neat and thrifty, and the 
peasantry comfortable and well to do. This, I imagine, is 
to be attributed to the mode in which they work the land. 
They take the land from year to year, for a single year, and 
work it on shares, on a system perfected by the experience 
of ages, with a view to the means and interest of both 
parties — a system that so thoroughly unites the interests of 
the landlord and tenant, and assumes such integrity and 
trustworthy confidence, that on both sides the relation often 
continues from generation to generation, each side proud of 
the mutual confidence of centuries — the tenant having rarely 
any desire to rise above the quiet routine of industry which 
secures to him the supply of his wants — always on the same 
dead level of a dependent and lower class — feeling its de- 
pendence, and feeling also that it is necessary to the higher 
class — the landlords. 

Florence — the capital of Tuscany — formerly written 
Fleurence in French — Italian, Firenze — Latin, Florentia — is 
supposed to have derived its name from its beautiful situa- 
tion in a flowery plain. Its plains and valleys, its hills and 
streams, its meadows and groves and gardens, fully justify 
the etymology of its beautiful name. It lies on both sides 
of the Arno, in about the latitude of our Portland, Maine — 
a cold parallel in the winter months, as those who have 
spent the winter there can tell you. Its earliest history is 
unknown — some say it was founded by the Lybian Hercu- 
les — others, by some soldiers of Sylla — others, by some -in- 
habitants of the ancient Fesula?, now Fiesole, which looks 
down upon it. Where shall we find a country now peopled 
by the descendants of its first inhabitants % On our own 
continent where are the builders of Palenque and Copan, 



FLORENCE. 243 

with their sculptured cyclopean walls? Who built the 
populous cities, whose earth-walls and fortifications stretch 
from the Gulf of Mexico to the far North ? Whence the 
dry and dusty mummies found in our great caves ? So, too, 
in Italy, the Pelasgians — the Phenicians — the Etrurians — 
who shall tell what, and whence, and whither? Here and 
there are their cyclopean walls, their rude sculptures and 
their pottery. Starting from Greece, and absorbed by Rome, 
we know almost nothing of them. 

Some say Florence was first settled by the Etruscans and 
next by the Phenicians, but this is all speculation. Flor- 
ence was one of the twelve confederated Etruscan cities, but 
reliable history hardly carries it back beyond the time of 
Julius Caesar, when it was a Roman city, and soon rose to 
be an important, though never a very large one. It has 
now a population of a little more than one hundred thousand 
souls — yet it has more than one hundred and fifty churches 
— some twenty public squares, and about one hundred and 
sixty public statues. There are a large number of palaces 
which, with many of the private buildings, are in the more 
striking Italian style of architecture — the older ones in the 
massive Tuscan order — heavy, solid, and prison-like — the 
lower windows iron-grated — and with deep and heavy orna- 
mented cornices to the roof. The streets are mostly narrow 
and compactly built, so that it is easy to take a look at all 
the lions every day. One thing struck me as very singular. 
I had not before noticed any instance of it — though it may 
be common in other European cities. All the houses in the 
city are numbered continuously to about ten thousand. The 
numbers have been apparenthy extended from the beginning, 
as new streets have been added. I could not make out any 
order of their coming. In one street the numbers may be all 
below two hundred, and in all the streets about it they may 
be above eisht thousand — indeed, the numbers on one side of 



244 HER GREAT MEN. 

a street may differ thousands from those on the other side. 
This mode of numbering at first seemed inconvenient to me, 
but a little familiarity made me think well of it. 

The Arno is spanned by six bridges in the town — four 
stone-arched bridges and two iron suspension bridges. One 
of the stone bridges is covered all the way across with nice 
shops or stores for the retail of the finest and most precious 
goods, such as jewelry and fancy goods. 

Florence has been, for many centuries, one of the most 
celebrated cities in Europe, and one of the most distinguish- 
ed in learning and art, as everybody knows. There com- 
menced the revival of learning, and the establishment of 
academies and literary societies, now so universal and so 
useful throughout the civilized world. She is rich in libra- 
ries. This little city has given six Popes to the Roman 
Church, and to letters, and art, and science, their most emi- 
nent names — Dante, Machiavelli, Galileo, Michael Angelo, 
and Americus Vespucius — the Medici family, so long so emi- 
nent — every man of these in the practical manifestation of his 
genius and forecast said, as Galileo muttered in words, 
while he signed his recantation of the earth's revolution, 
" and yet it moves," although, out of respect to a tyrannical 
and bigoted conservatism, they may have seemed to recant 
or ignore the truths of progress. Unnumbered others of less 
note might be named. A genuine and well-considered 
progress has here been considered — as it should be everywhere 
— the true conservatism, and hence it is that while she 
yields to none in the glory of her art, she excels every other 
city in Italy, if not in Europe, in the fame of her great men 
— established in the most enduring history all along through 
the last seven hundred years. She was one of the first 
Italian cities to adopt the republican form of government, 
which, under the influence of the same causes that 
built up the family of Italian republics, passed from an aris- 



CHURCHES. 245 

tocratic to a democratic republicanism. This — under the 
influences of extensive and prosperous commerce — brought 
luxury, corruption, and crime, and these brought the royal 
government, which now exists under the dominion and title 
of a Grand Duke of Tuscany. More modern republics may 
learn from her destiny. It is now a walled city with seven 
gates, but neither its gates nor its walls, built originally for 
warlike defence, would furnish an hour's protection against 
well-directed attacks of modern warfare. They, nevertheless, 
add to the interest of the city. The towers — which were 
formerly numerous — have mostly passed away, and it has 
the appearance of a city devoted to the arts and enjoyment 
of peace. Some of its public places are very fine, and some 
few of its streets spacious, and light, and cheerful, as well as 
beautiful, in their architecture. 

The external appearance of many of its most remarkable 
churches is unattractive, from their not being finished. 
They usually give their names to the public places upon 
which they are erected, and if their exteriors were finished in 
the same style of perfection as the interiors, they would 
add greatly to the beauty of the city, which, even in its 
present condition, well merits the title of " La bella." The 
Cathedral, and Saint Mark, and Santa Croce, and Santa 
Maria Novella, and Santa Trinita, with their interior archi- 
tecture and ornament, their paintings, and sculptures, and 
monuments, and graves of the immortal dead, as well as 
their public places — some more and some less spacious — 
deserve all the praise that has been bestowed upon them. 

The Cathedral acknowledges no superior except St. Pe- 
ter's. I think its exterior, like that of San Lorenzo in Ge- 
noa, is less striking in architectural effect, from being built 
of alternate blocks of black and white marble. It is, how- 
ever, exceedingly striking and noble, — and is seen to most 
advantage from some little distant elevation, where the eye 



246 BAPTISTRY. 

can take in move of its proportions, and appreciate the 
unique effect of smaller domes clustering around the base of 
that majestic central dome — which, as a mere dome, is hoth 
larger and higher than that of St. Peter's. The interior is 
too dark for the best effect of its architecture and ornament, 
It has monumental memorials — but Santa Croce is the West- 
minster Abbey of Florence for the famous dead — the tombs 
of Michael Angelo, Dante, Galileo, Alfieri, Machiavelli, 
Lanzi, L. Aretino, &c., &c, &c. , are in Santa Croce. On 
the same " Place," and near the Cathedral, is the Campanile 
or bell-tower — an elaborate, slender and square tower, stand- 
ing erect, but inferior in effect to that of Pisa, notwith- 
standing its leaning. The Baptistry of the Cathedral is also 
but a few steps from it, and is an exceeding fine and elabo- 
rate building. Two of its bronze doors, by Ghiberti, rep- 
resenting on one the principal events in the life of the Sa- 
vior, and on the other the most striking events of the Old 
Testament, are the most wonderful specimens of that kind 
of sculpture in existence. They were said by Michael An- 
gelo to be fit for the gates of Paradise. They cost more 
than thirty thousand florins. The other door was made by 
Pisano one hundred years before, and its completion was 
honored by festivities throughout Tuscany. The walls of 
the Baptistry are more than eleven hundred years old, and 
are supposed to have been those of a heathen temple. They 
are now faced with black and white marble like the cathe- 
dral, which was done about six hundred years ago. All 
the Florentine babies are baptized at the font of this Bap- 
tistry, and they amount to about twelve a day — of course 
you need not wait long to see the ceremony if you desire to 
do so. I saw one — perhaps the little thing was very easy 
to baptize, for the performance was hurried, perfunctory, 
and unsolemn enough for one deemed to be so important. 
They have not, I suppose, much time to waste on every-day 



FLORENTINE REPUBLIC. 247 

babies — for, doubtless they have more ceremony and delay 
with nobler and richer blood. Dante once broke a font to 
save a drowning babe that carelessness had dropped into the 
water. One of the Medici family, also, on the baptism of 
his son, dashed the font in pieces. In both cases the so- 
called sacrilegious act gave infinite offence. 

The group of the Cathedral, the Campanile, and the Bap- 
tistry, make the " Place " of the Cathedral the first in 
architectural interest in Florence, but that of Santa Croce 
is much larger, and was the birth-place of the Republic 
of Florence. It was in this " Place " that in 1250, in 
sudden tumult the good men of Florence assembled — de- 
clared themselves the people — took possession of supreme 
power — declared the popular will the only source of politi- 
cal authority — elected a captain of the people — and organ- 
ized a democratic government, which grew to the Florentine 
Republic. 

Within a circle upon the front of the Santa Croce are the 
original initials I. H. S., which we so often see upon Episco- 
pal and Roman Catholic churches. They were first used in 
this instance, and were placed there by Saint Bernardino, 
who invented them to denote the Savior's name and mis- 
sion. Jcsu hominum Salvator — Jesus the Savior of men. 

They say of Saint Bernardino that he remonstrated with 
a manufacturer of playing cards for his profane illumination 
of his cards, when the poor mechanic pleaded his poverty 
and the wants of his family. The Saint thereupon replied 
that he would aid him, and told him to paint upon his cards 
those sacred initials, which he did, and the sanctified cards 
had a wonderful sale — card-players and blacklegs doubtless 
considering that with them they gambled on Christian prin- 
ciples. The anecdote may be true or false, like the profane 
anecdote of the old gambler Miron, whom St. Evremond 
makes to exclaim in vexation, " I make the sign of the cross 



248 THE CASCINE. 

before I play, and yet I do not win even once " — or that of 
the blasphemous marble gaming-table found in Rome, on 
which was painted a cross, about which were these words — 
" Our Savior attends and helps those to win who play at dice 
here " — or that of the wicked French Abbe who frequented 
gaming-houses more than he did churches — he charged his 
misfortunes at play to the Church — well might she punish 
him. He finally determined to threaten her with revealing 
her most profitable secret if she was not more favorable fo 
him — says he, " If I lose this time I will tell !" — he lost, and 
to make his words good he indignantly declared that there 
was no purgatory. 

The Cascine — the dairy farm — now a beautiful range of 
public grounds, constitute the Hyde Park of Florence, and 
are an exceeding pleasant rural promenade for drives and 
walks and shady repose, amid flowers and trees and groves — 
and here, on pleasant days, throng the people of fashion and 
leisure in every variety of carriages, on horseback, and on 
foot. The solitary and the social alike find gratification 
and delight in its cheering variety of scene. It lies on the 
bank of the Arno, and many of its most pleasant spots de- 
rive most of their agreeableness from the view of the river, 
which although not particularly beautiful itself, still, as part 
of such a composite landscape greatly heightens its beauty. 
In the midst of the Cascine is a little palace built by the 
Grand Duke for the public gratification, for balls and fetes — 
and there is also a restaurant for the refreshment of the in- 
ner man. In such a public promenade, of course, the flow- 
er-girls to whom I have alluded before, will be met with in 
great numbers, and contribute to the liveliness of the scene. 
They are rarely, however, either pretty, graceful, or modest. 

The Grand Duke is intolerant, they say — we have heard 
of his persecutions — so is the Pope, so is the King of Na- 
ples — yet without any restraint or surveillance we, and all 



FIESOLE. 249 

others that chose, attended Protestant service on Sunday — 
on the Lung'arno, a few doors from our hotel. So in Na- 
ples — so we might have done in Home, had not temporary 
and voluntary reasons prevented service while we were there. 
Synagogues of the Jews are permitted everywhere. The 
second, if not the first, in size and splendor in Europe, is in 
Leghorn, under the Grand Duke. While the whole his- 
tory of religion shows that the Roman Catholic church is 
intolerant, I have often asked myself the question, whether 
it may not he possible that there is something exaggerated 
and unjust in our notions on the subject now, since the 
spirit of modern times has somewhat modified the tone of 
Romanism. It asserts its old dogmas, when asked the ques- 
tion, but practically it holds them with a difference. Who 
knows but as time rolls we may all come to be more tolerant 
and charitable in matters of religion ? Since God lets us 
all live, we may content to let each other live ! 

We took a barouche at an early hour of a lovely Italian 
morning, to visit Fiesole — the ancient Fesula? — and a lovely 
drive brought us to its lofty elevation. It is only about 
three miles oflf, and might with tolerable ease be reached on 
foot in the cool of the morning — but in the summer time, 
after the sun is well up, the ascent being exceedingly steep, 
a walk up its sides would be wearisome and sweltering, 
and besides that, the peculiarity exists here which I 
believe prevails throughout Italy, of building the roadside 
fence of solid masonry, some six to eight feet high, so that 
the foot traveller sees nothing but the walls — he cannot look 
over them. These walls are exceedingly annoying in the 
beautiful outskirts of cities, especially such environs as those 
of Florence. Unless )'on have time and leisure you are 
hardly able to get in within these high walls to examine the 
details of the beauty of the palaces, villas, and country resi- 
dences of these unequalled suburbs, which, with the lower 

11* 



250 FIESOLE. 

and open ornamental fences of our American rus in urbc, 
might be taken in by panoramic views, and each individual 
paradise would be greatly heightened in its own charms, by 
the reflected light of all others. We kept quietly on the 
high road, and as soon as we began to rise from the valleys 
Florence and its environs were spread out before us, as one 
great composition, well worthy of all the praises which trav- 
ellers have bestowed upon it, in their most glowing descrip- 
tions. To break the steep of the ascent, the road winds up 
the hill, and portions of the scene are alternately shut out 
and shut in — making a most agreeable variety of beautiful 
changes till you are fairly on the top, in the public square 
of Fiesole. There is no city there — though I believe they 
call it a city — only a little village, on the site of the ancient 
town, of which hardly a vestige of ruins remains. There 
are some small remnants of Etruscan walls near by, which 
the guide-books and cicerones make more of than they 
seem to deserve — they arc but heavy walls of stones of 
large size, laid as usual without cement or mortar. There 
is a cathedral some eight hundred years old — another old 
church — an old town-house — a few humble dwellings round 
the public square — and this is the city of Fiesole. Above 
this, a foot-road leads you up to the monastery, which now 
sits on the top of the highest point of the hill. All these 
might be more interesting if the whole land were not full of 
similar antiquities, but not for these would we have dragged 
up the toilsome hill. It was for the world-renowned view 
of the Val d'Arno and the river itself, and the little Mug- 
none, with its rapid torrent dancing through the enchanted 
grounds, and those palaces and villas and gardens and groves 
and flowers through which our road wound up the steep, 
and that great city, so beautiful in its arrangements, its 
public buildings, and its architecture — in its treasures of art 
and literature and science — its glorious memories and his- 



PROCESSION OF THE CORPUS DOMINI. 251 

torical associations! Looking down upon such a city — so 
near as to be distinct and to individualize its objects, still so 
far off as to lose its noise and its motion, and its little 
defects and imperfections, there is nothing to divert the 
mind from a most suggestive intellectual reverie. It is a 
spot and an enjoyment to which there is no parallel. 

We were glad to have an opportunity to see the proces- 
sion of the Corpus Domini during our stay at Florence. The 
ceremony, I suppose, is the same everywhere, but there is 
more or less splendor, according to the place and the people. 
Here, of course, there was much display. The priests in 
their sacred vestments — and with their sacred implements 
and symbols, and canopies and banners, and clouds of in- 
cense puffing from their swinging censers — the military, in 
their most showy arms and equipments, and with their 
proudest banners — the bands of music, with their instru- 
ments burnished to dazzling brightness — the people in their 
holiday apparel — and the principal streets through which 
the gorgeous procession moved, decked out with tapestries 
and hangings of scarlet and parti-colors of great beauty and 
richness, trailing from the windows of the several stories of 
the lofty palaces and other buildings on the streets, and 
waving and swaying in the gentle summer breeze, that 
seemed only to accompany the procession to give a livelier 
and more various and wavy beauty to its appointments — all 
made up a sight well worth our looking upon, and while it 
seemed to us but a gay and holiday display, because we did 
not understand its suggestive signs and ceremonies, and could 
perceive none of its solemnity — to the devout Catholic who 
read its language and felt its teachings, it was a solemn, 
devout and appropriate act of religion — one of the most 
affecting manifestations of the worship and honor of God. 
So education and habit make us to differ. They do not 
differ from us more than we do from them — both of us 



252 AKT IN FLORENCE. 

taught by our parents and cmr appointed religious teachers, 
and they before by theirs. 

Florence is justly celebrated as a great centre — I should 
think deservedly considered the greatest centre — of the 
highest art. Its two great public galleries seem to me on 
the whole to surpass those of Rome and Naples, although 
those of Rome taken together are much more numerous. As 
galleries of sculpture and painting, those of Florence are 
large enough, and have a larger proportion of works of un- 
questioned excellence of the highest order. They are con- 
tained in the Uffizii, a building originally erected for the pub- 
lic offices of the government — and now containing many of 
them, including the Mint — and in the Pitti Palace, the 
great public palace of the Grand Duke. The apartments 
devoted to art are some twenty feet high, and if you sup- 
pose the walls of all the apartments exlend-ed in one 
unbroken line, they would reach about one mile and a half. 
In the two main galleries of the Uffizii — each about four 
hundred and thirty feet long — the paintings <? re arranged 
chronologically from the earliest productions to the most 
celebrated of the old masters — affording an exceedingly in- 
teresting study, to trace the progress of art through all the 
stages of its rise and perfection. The variety of works 
of many of the masters enables you also to trace their indi- 
vidual progress, while the number of masters whose works 
are here brought together is so great that you have spread 
out before you almost the art of the world. Then in smaller 
apartments are even more select collections. The cele- 
brated Tribune, for instance, which is a small octagon room 
of about twenty-two feet diameter, but constructed and 
lighted in the most perfect manner for the exhibition of 
works of art, contains a wealth of art in compass so small as 
to remind you of a casket of precious stones — indeed, the 
room was built originally, two hundred and fifty years ago, 



THE TRIBUNE. 253 

for precious curiosities, medals and gems. The pavement is 
of marble, and the cupola is inlaid and incrusted with 
mother-of-pearl. It contains five works of sculpture — the 
Venus de Medicis, of which you can only say that among 
all the statues of Venus, it holds the same place and power 
which Venus herself did among the fair inhabitants of the 
pagan heaven — the Apollino, or the little Apollo, a male 
statue of similar merit, and by the same artist — Cleomenes 
of Athens — the Dancing Faun, the Wrestlers, and the Slave 
Whetting his Knife — five statues which would make a repu- 
tation for any gallery of art. Besides these statues on their 
pedestals, in this room are the finest specimens of paintings 
by Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, Paul Veronese, Annibai 
Carracci, Spagnoletto, Guercino, Fra Bartolomeo, Daniel de 
Volterra, Andrea del Sarto, Albert Durer, Andrea Monteg- 
na, Pietro Perugino, Luini, Correggio, Parmigiano, Guido, 
Domenichino, Van Dyck, Barroccio, Giulio Romano, Schi- 
done, Rubens, Lanfrance, Luc de Holland — several speci- 
mens of some of them. TVhat an array of artistic genius 
and celebrity ! What an opportunity — only necessary to 
turn upon your heel, to compare them all with each other ! 
Having gone through the Uffizii, you are hardly prepared to 
expect another such a display in the Pitti Palace — yet 
there they are, as a whole collection, finer than the other — 
five hundred in all, and not a bad picture among them, and 
hardly a famous artist not represented by at least one 
specimen. Besides these great galleries, there arc — in the pri- 
vate palaces of the city — many smaller valuable collections. 
At the Academy of Fine Arts there is a collection of great 
merit, especially for the purposes of study. We went there 
principally to see the collection of prize paintings by modern 
artists — many of which seemed to me to be works of a very 
high order of merit. 

Another great attraction of Florence is its extensive 



254 STUDIO OF POWERS. 

Museum of Natural History, and its wonderful Anatomical 
Museum — both in the same building. I never was more 
struck with admiration than by the variety and the absolute 
perfection — as it seemed to me — of this great collection of 
preparations of morbid and normal anatomy — models in wax* 
— more like nature than nature herself. 

Although much pressed for time, we did not fail to call 
at the studio of Powers, who has done so much for us — 
America — in the way of reputation — as a sculptor. His 
frank American manner was refreshing to us, and we looked 
at all his works there. We had not time to study them as 
he showed us through his studio. The statue of Washing- 
ton was well under way — that of Webster was in progress. 
The cast from his face, after death, was there, I could see 
that it was like him, but his face was lean, eye-sunken, and 
bony, and I could not help feeling that there was a slight 
look of disappointment and disconsolateness — 

" Moestissimus Hector! 
* * * Quantum mutatus ab illo 
Hectore, qui redit exuvias indutus Achilli!" 

when he came from his triumph over Hayns, where, single- 
handed, he had driven back the combined forces of disunion 
and nullification — a triumph of -eloquence and patriotism be- 
yond all Greek or Roman fame. 

I took a look in upon the Court of Cassation of Tuscany, 
and could only admire its noble simplicity and quiet dignity. 
There were no spectators except myself, and there were about 
as many lawyers as judges, and the choice Italian in which the 
discussions were carried on left me nothing to desire except to 
be able to understand it. I made my stay too short to learn 
any interesting peculiarities of their judicial or professional 
manners. Accurtus, sometimes called the idol of lawyers, 



RAILROADS IN ITALY. 255 

as well as many other distinguished jurists, was a native of 
Florence, and the Florentines are almost as proud of their 
distinction in jurisprudence as in other departments of in- 
tellectual eminence. 

The Tuscans have felt the impulses of modern progress so 
much as to do something in the way of railroads. Besides 
the railroads from Florence to Leghorn and to Lucca, there 
is also a railroad from Florence to Pistoja, which would 
have formed a part of my route north, but, unfortunately, it 
was in a state of syncope, or death, for aught I know — I ac- 
cordingly had to rely upon the comfortable but slow and 
lumbering diligence. 

The progress of railroads in Italy has been slow. It is 
nevertheless progress, and they will in time connect all the 
principal points of the peninsula. This cannot fail to come 
from the striking evidences of prosperity which are seen 
wherever they are in operation, like the fresher and more 
luxuriant green that we see in the meadows and pastures 
where little springs and streams keep the earth fresh and 
watered. From Turin to Genoa — from Venice to Verona 
— from Florence to Leghorn, and Lucca, to Siena, and to 
Pistoja — from Naples to Capua and to Castellamare — all of 
them have a fertilizing effect upon their respective localities ? 
and the time cannot be long distant, when these, which are 
now only the beginnings of railroads, will be pushed forward 
till they become a connected web of Italian railroads, car- 
rying commercial prosperity and activity to almost every 
part of Italy. There is not a mile of railroad in the terri- 
tories of the Pope. It has been said that His Holiness will 
not permit these modern highways of progress to penetrate 
his sacred and stagnant dominions, and let in the profane 
light of improvement. This may be so — but, doubtless, he 
will ultimately yield. I bought a copy of the " Charivari," 
in which a satirical jeu cV esprit, of a column, was devoted to 



256 RAILROADS IN ROME. 

this subject, in which the Pope was represented as excom- 
municating and anathematizing railroads as pestilent and 
never to be tolerated agents and contrivances of the devil — 
applying to them, and their fire, and smoke, and engines, &c, 
in detail, all the maledictions in the excommunicating foiv- 
mulary of Emulphus, as read by Dr. Slop to Mr. Shandy 
and Uncle Toby, and which I will not attempt to repeat 
here. The paper was taken from me by a custom-house 
officer, and trusting only to my memory and the original 
anathema, I should only make that dull and profane, which 
in the " Charivari" was neither — but was readable and in- 
finitely amusing for the pungency and severity of its good- 
natured satire, and for the attic and aromatic flavor of its 
ingenious and vivacious witticisms. I was vexed at the loss 
of the paper after it was too late to get another, for I intend- 
ed to give the article to you entire. , 

His Holiness may object and even anathematize the rail- 
road, but it will not be long before the locomotive will 
answer him with " Phizz, phizz, phizz, phit ! " — as it puffs 
its smoke and steam in his face, in the sacred purlieus of the 
Vatican. None of the other Italian railroads surpass or 
even equal those of Sardinia in activity and thrift. The 
example of that semi-heretical kingdom will, however, have 
no force with the sacred college of cardinals, but one would 
think that even they might encourage or permit, in the 
Pope's dominions, what the bigoted Grand Duke of Tuscany 
and the Emperor of Austria tolerate in their Italian do- 
minions. It was doubtless the revolution of 1848-9 that 
turned the heart of his Holiness against all reform. Without 
that, and left to himself when he assumed the pontificate, 
I do not doubt that he would have given an inclination to 
his policy and a tendency in his measures which before this 
would have introduced slowly indeed, but surely, many re- 
forms, and might have permanently liberalized the Italian 



DEPARTURE FROM FLORENCE. 257 

mind in matters of Church as well as of State. It was 
probably the apprehension of this, which forced around him, 
and compelled him to accept counsellors who poisoned his 
mind and warped and perverted his judgment, till all hope of 
improvement under him was extinguished, and thus rebel- 
lion, assassination, and revolution, drove him into exile and 
overthrew his government. He returned to his government 
but not to his power. His temporal power received a great 
shock in that revolution, but a greater in the foreign surveil- 
lance which has followed his restoration. It took ages to 
build up that power to its culminating point — ages more 
have wasted away in reducing it to its present condition, 
and let no one be impatient, if it takes still ages more to 
extinguish it. Its fall seems to be inevitable. Railroads 
will not hasten it, but they will bring upon the stage men 
and systems of thought and action better adapted to 
receive and perpetuate the new order of things, when the 
Pope shall lay aside his temporal sovereignty, and, rendering 
unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, shall, with all his 
priests, pay that tribute of obedience to the State in secular 
things which is so abundantly taught in the Holy Scrip- 
tures. 

We took our seats two days in advance, and waited a day 
longer in Florence to get our favorite seats in the coupe of 
the diligence for our ride over the Appenines by the pass of 
La Futa. The morning of our departure found us at the 
office of the diligence in the borgo S. Apostoli, near the 
Piazza S. Trinita, and we were soon rumbling over the fine 
pavements, and as we passed through a long diameter of 
the city to the Porta S. Gallo, we got our last glimpses of 
the cathedral, the campanile and the baptistiy, and of the 
church of San Lorenzo — and, once outside the walls, we 
began to enjoy the luxury of a gentle and easy drive up a 
rapid ascent, in the midst of the most beautiful scenery in 



258 OVER THE APPENINES. 

the world — seen from a different quarter than when we went 
up to Fiesole, and presenting a wonderful variety, as we rose 
from one level to another, and changed our position as the 
fine public road adapted itself to the sinuosities and ups and 
downs of our rising journey through the land of the oli\je 
and the vine, till we took in the tower-crowned Fiesole, the 
valley of the Mugnone and the Arno, and the beautiful city 
of flowers — Florentia — and its exquisite and palatial and 
suburban villas, in one view. Nowhere in Italy does the 
cultivation appear more perfect or more beautiful, and no- 
where are more agreeably mingled the finest charms of na- 
ture and art. 

" Tall spires and glittering roof and battlement, 
And banners floating in the sunny gales, 
The vines, the flowers, the air, the skies, that fling 
Such wild enchantment o'er Boccaccio's tales 
Of Florence and the Arno." 

Ariosto says of these suburban villas and palaces alone, 
that, if they could be brought together within one Avail, and 
called by one name, two Romes could not equal it. 

As we rise up the mountains, if it were not for an occa- 
sional convent, palace, or other building — unlike anything in 
our country — we should see nothing to remind us of our 
absence from our own land. We pass Fontebuona and 
Caffaggiolo, and through the famous Val di Murgillo, so 
celebrated for its beauty, and climb to the top of one of the 
spurs of the Appenines, and move along its summit to 
Monte Carelli, and then by a steep but easily managed 
ascent, we are soon on the summit of the pass of La Futa — 
about three thousand feet above the sea — the highest point 
in our passage over the mountains. It is cold, even in 
summer, and warm clothing is necessary for comfort — but 
in winter it is said to be bitter cold, exposed to the severest 
storms, and often impassable from snow, all along from 



NORTHERN SLOPES OF THE MOUNTAINS. 259 

Cavigliajo to Pietramala — some fifteen or twenty miles. 
What bitter experiences suffering travellers sometimes en- 
counter here, who, intending to spend the winter in Italy, 
delay passing the mountains till the late autumn — Novem- 
ber — unaware of the severity of the cold till they are in 
the midst of it. The tops of the Appenines are not clad in 
snow in the summer time, like the Alps. 

AH through the Continent you are required to hire, or at 
least to pay for, additional horses in ascending heavy hills. 
Here they gave us oxen — which are the regular extra horses 
for the diligence. They are trained however to move like 
horses, and over the little spots of level or down-hill which 
often occur in the mountain road, they trot off as nimbly 
and cheerily as a span of fresh bays— but it looks odd, with 
such a pair of leaders. 

The scenery and the make of the land and the moun- 
tains, the sharp and ragged summits and the deep and woody 
ravines and the farm-houses and the barns and flocks and 
herds on the hillsides, and the hay-stacks in the meadows, 
and the stone walls and the fences, are for all the world 
like the wayside views of the mountain routes in our north- 
ern and middle States. 

When on the summit we do not get any very fine view 
of a large map of country, but after a descent of a few 
miles, as we came to Lojano, the look off is exceedingly 
fine. The eye, taking in a wide horizon, falls upon the cul- 
tivated plains of northern Italy — the Cisapine Gaul. Gallia 
togata of the ancients — the Roman Gaul — the chain of the 
Alps with their snowy peaks in the dim, distant and shad- 
owy horizon, on the one hand, and the glassy waters of 
the Adriatic on the other, and the intermediate immense 
valley of the Po, with its tributaries, shining like silver in 
the Italian sun, and the great and famous cities Modena, 
Mantua, Padua, Verona, Bologna and Ferrara— within visi- 



260 APPROACH TO BOLOGNA. 

ble distance but not at all visible — fill the eye with forms of 
beauty and the mind with the great memories of their his- 
tory, from the best days of Ancient Rome to the modern 
times of Austrian occupation — this great scene spread out 
before us, and growing visibly nearer and nearer for hours, 
as in our winding and zigzag descent, we hurried down the 
mountains and through the fertile and beautiful valley of 
the Savena, and found ourselves in the near approaches 
to the walled city of Bologna. 

"We had observed as we descended to the plains and en- 
tered the dominions of the Pope, in the northern States of 
the Church, that we left behind us something of the thrifty, 
comfortable and well-to-do appearance of the Tuscan peo- 
ple and their agriculture, and mendicant monks and priests 
sometimes appeared again on the scene, and tatterdemalion 
beggars occasionally beset us, as in Rome and its environs, 
though much fewer here than there. We found also that 
the same beautiful breed of mouse-colored oxen, which we 
so much admired in Rome and its environs, made their ap- 
pearance again, here in the northern dominions of his Holi- 
ness, but we saw here what we never saw there, an occa- 
sional departure from the beautiful regularity and proportion 
and size of their majestic horns. There is here, in rare in- 
stances, a sort of provincial twist or tendency to crumple, 
sometimes in one horn and sometimes in both. The donkey, 
the beggar, and the priest, too, have an air more provincial, 
rustic and campagnard. We recognized here, also, an old ac- 
quaintance, the uniform and rig of the Roman postillion, with 
variations which increased its grotesqueness. We all, pos- 
tillion and guards, and passengers and horses, seemed to feel 
inspired with new life and cheerfulness as we passed from 
the last slopes of the Appenines on to the beautiful plains 
of Northern Italy, and hurried on to the northern capital 
of the States of the Church. 



STATES OF THE CHURCH BOLOGNA. 

THE approach and entrance to the city of Bologna, me 
Bononia of the ancient Romans and Felsina of the 
more ancient Etruscans — always beautiful even to the most 
cultivated eye, is still more so as the traveller contrasts it 
with the mountain scenery of the Appenines from whose 
desolate and rugged heights he has descended to the plains 
below. No one seemed to enjoy it more than our postillion 
who came in, not only like stage-drivers everywhere, with a 
triumphant flourish of speed and spirits, galloping through 
the streets as it were to show that his cattle were as fresh at 
the end as at the beginning of their journey — but actually, 
like a true Italian, extracting music from everything. For 
the last half mile he kept cracking his short postillion whip 
right and left — 

" Keeping time, keeping time, 
With a sort of runic rhyme." 

and with a rhythm and an air not only musical but really 
exhilarating and amusing to us all. He was " tuning " 
his horses. They seemed to keep step to his rapid measures. 



262 STREET ARCADES — HOTEL SAN MARCO. 

The best streets of Bologna are wider, and better built 
and more agreeable, than those of most Italian towns we 
have visited. Through the principal streets the houses pro- 
ject over wide sidewalks, and are supported by fine colonnades 
of various architecture, principally Doric. The foot-pas- 
sengers are thus protected from the burning heats of the 
parching Italian sun of the summer, and the showers and 
snows of the spring and the winter. The effect to the eye 
is very fine, and the comfort and convenience of passing 
from street to street in the open air, still sheltered by such 
fine arcades, must be felt to be appreciated. In the heart 
of mid-summer we find their shade exceedingly acceptable. 
In winter their shelter can be no less so, for Bologna is fur- 
ther north than Portland. We hurried on to the most dis- 
tinguished hotel of the city, the San Marco, where we were 
fortunate enough to find excellent quarters, and good atten- 
tion, and an excellent valet de place to show us the attrac- 
tions of the city. The spacious passages and stairways of 
the San Marco are covered with painted canvas memorials 
of the distinguished guests that have honored it with their 
presence. I shall give mine host of the imperial and royal 
hotel the benefit of the advertisement translated into English. 

His Imperial and Royal Highness, Joseph, Palatine of 
Hungary, lodged here from the 21st to the 23d November, 
1818. 

The Prince and Piincess of Salerno 9th Dec, 1810. 

His Royal Majesty, Ferdinand I. King of the two Sicilies, 
lodged here 20th October, 1821. 

His Imperial and Royal Highness, the Grand Duke of 
Tuscany, lodged here the 10th Oct., 1822. 

The King of Bavaria, June 17, 1822. 

Their Majesties, the King and Queen of the two Sicilies, 
lodged here from the 5th to the 6th of May, 1825. 



TWO LEANING TOWERS. 263 

His Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, Nicholas, lodged 
in this imperial and royal hotel of San Marco, the 22d to 
the 23d Dec. of the year 1845. 

His Highness, Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, Senator of 
the French Empire, lodged in this imperial and royal hotel 
of San Marco, the 28th, 29th and 30th March, 1854. 

It was from such a celebrated, imperial and royal hotel 
that we wandered forth with our valet, after every meal, to 
make our bowing acquaintance with the still-life celebrities 
of Bologna. There are two leaning towers of great height, 
the Garisenda 138 feet high, and the Asinelli 320. They 
are near together — one leans in one direction and the other 
in another — toward each other. One is about three feet and 
the other about eight feet out of perpendicular. The view 
from the top must be fine — but after having gone to the top 
of the celebrated one at Pisa, with its eight lofty and dizzy 
circular stories, and the magnificent and numberless arches 
and columns that surround and hide its imminent walls, we 
did not stop to wonder at, much less to ascend these plain, 
ugly brick towers — especially as the ascent is said to be ex- 
ceedingly wearisome. We should, doubtless,, have ascended 
the higher one for the prospect, had we come from the plains 
of the north, and had we not just left the mountain heights 
and wider prospect of the Appenines. The towers are some 
seven hundred and fifty years old, and look more like large 
chimneys than anything else. They are said to have been 
built for defence and protection in the stormy and war- 
like times of Guelphs and Ghibelines. The question has 
been raised — as with regard to that at Pisa — whether they 
were not purposely made to lean — but I believe there is 
really no good reason to doubt that their inclination is 
caused by the yielding of the foundations, under the influ- 
ence of volcanoes and earthquakes. Their beams and arches 
have the same inclination as their walls. 



264 THE BOLOGNESE. 

This northern capital of the States of the Church has a 
history and characteristics hardly surpassed in interest by 
any of the Italian cities. It is a small city of some seven- 
ty-five thousand souls, embracing within its walls some three 
square miles — the proper capital of only about three hun- 
dred and fifty thousand people — still any country on the 
continent of Europe might be proud of it as its capital, 
for the beauty and comfort of its street architecture — its 
streets and walks, broad thoroughfares, and noble arcades — 
its noble churches and palaces and other public buildings — 
its schools and works of art — its unsurpassed public institu- 
tions of the highest antiquity, and of the most various and 
fruitful usefulness — and its intelligent, learned and prosper- 
ous population. The freedom of the manners of its people, 
and the independence of their opinions, as well as their 
warlike bravery, whenever they have taken the field, have 
made them everywhere and always respected by their ene- 
mies and admired by their friends. The Holy See has al- 
Avays been proud of them, though not without complaint of 
their independence and semi-rebellious disposition, and not 
without constant endeavors to subdue their spirit and break 
up their pre-eminence and make them submissive, docile and 
contented. It was one of the twelve confederated cities of 
Etruria, and their capital one thousand years before Christ — 
one of the principal cities of Celtic Gaul — and one of 
the Roman Colonies in Cisalpine Gaul. As an indepen- 
dent Republic, a Free City, a province of Rome, it has al- 
ways had an industrious, active, gay, energetic, commercial 
and manufacturing population, apparently comfortable and 
happy. The occupation of Rome by the French, in 1848, 
brought down, upon this northern Rome, the Austrians, Avho, 
after a noble and bloody resistance on the part of the 
Bolognese, occupied the fortifications, and still maintain their 
presence and surveillance. 



LEARNED WOMEN. 265 

Bologna should be the Mecca of strong-minded women — 
a place for the World's Woman's Rights Convention — for 
here woman has arisen to positions and honors unequalled 
anywhere else,' Our own land is justly called the paradise 
of woman, for there all classes of people show her the 
daily honor and deference of respect and affection. Let the 
sex stay in America — let womanly delicacy and dependence 
keep them where the soft tyranny of gentle influences secures 
an undivided dominion, and perpetuates its sway by uncon- 
scious compulsion and imperceptible training, but let the un- 
sexed go to Bologna — the city of Propertia de Rossi, Novella 
Calderir.i, ElizabettaSirani, Catherine Vigri, Antonietta Pin- 
elli, Diamante Dolfi, Lavinia Fontana, Novella d' Andrea, 
Laura Bassi, Madonna Manzolina, and Clotilda Tambroni. 
Novella d' Andrea was the daughter of Giovanni d' An- 
drea, professor of law in the University — an exceedingly 
pious man — he slept twenty years on the ground, covered 
only with a bear-skin — for piety — and he was a man of 
vast learning. Pope Boniface called him Lumen mundi — 
light of the world — and in his epitaph he is written down — 
liabbi doctorum, lux, censor, normaque inorum — the chief of 
learned men, the light, censor, and pattern of manners. 
Novella, had her father's learning and ability, and when the 
learned and saintly professor — from rheumatism, caught 
under the bear-skin or some other cause — was unable to 
lecture, she took his place, and delighted the students with 
her learning and eloquence. She was of surpassing beauty, 
and her father saw that jurisprudence and pious self-mortifl- 
cation would be at a discount in his classes, if they were 
allowed to gaze on Novella — and, indeed, they might stare 
her out of countenance, for she was the pattern of virtue. 
So he had a curtain, 

" Drawn before her, 
Lest, if her charms were seen, the students 
Should let their young eyet> wander o'er her, 
And quite forget their jurisprudence." 

12 



266 LEARNED WOMEN. 

Laura Bassi, LL. D., was a female Professor of Mathe- 
matics and Natural Philosophy, Avhose lectures were at- 
tended regularly by classes of learned ladies from France 
and Germany, as well as Italy, and also by men who were 
members of the university. Her monument, conspicuous 
among others in the university, records, in Latin, her pro- 
fessorship, and that, having emulated the Bolognese ladies 
of old, who were illustrious by their learning, she had there 
renewed the ancient glory of her sex and greatly increased 
it, and that the matrons of Bologna had, by their contribu- 
tions, raised that monument to her honor. She died in 
1778, aged sixty-six. 

Another fine monument perpetuates the fame of Clotilda 
Tambroni, chosen a professor among the doctors of the 
university, for her distinguished ability as a teacher of the 
Greek language, and as a pattern of every virtue. Her 
colleagues and her pupils honored her with that monument 
in 1818. She was the friend and predecessor of the great 
Polyglott Cardinal Mezzofanti. These two monuments are 
among the monumental marbles that are reared in the uni- 
versity to the celebrities that have been connected with that 
celebrated seminary. 

Madonna Manzolina graduated with great eclat in sur- 
gery, and subsequently was professor of anatomy. As we 
stood in the anatomical theatre — seats for about two hun- 
dred — we could not help thinking how strange it would look 
to American or English eyes to see a lady demonstrating 
from the cadaver the structure of the human body, to a 
mixed class of medical students, gentlemen and ladies. 

Poor Propertia de Kossi! She began by sculpturing 
large figures in wood. She passed from that to the beauti- 
ful and delicate art of sculpture upon nut-shells, and finally 
to sculpture in stones and marble. She painted beautifully, 
and engraved on copper and on wood, and she was a charm- 



BOLOGNESE WOMEN. 267 

ing musician. Smitten with love for a young man, who 
rejected her affection, she immortalized them both and her 
story in her master-piece of sculpture, a bas-relief of Joseph 
and Potiphar's wife. What a parallel chosen by herself! 
It was her last work. Determined to transfer to the marble 
that likeness of her heart's idol which existed in her exalted 
imagination, combined with the divine purity of the alarmed 
young patriarch, the effort overcame her, and her heart- 
strings broke. Pope Clement VII., had just performed the 
coronation of Charles V., in the church of San Petronio, 
and was admiring that marvellous monument of her genius, 
and requested her to accompany him to Rome, as a fitter 
place for the display of her powers. The poor, love-sick 
maid, who had achieved the most brilliant success in every- 
thing but her unfortunate love, replied to His Holiness, that 
in that church must be her funeral — and she died as the 
words fell from her lips. 

The higher classes of women in Bolognese society are said 
to possess great intelligence, masculine vigor, and terseness 
of thought and expression — more ease than grace, and more 
art than humor — more of the gems of literature than the 
flowers of fancy — more of the persuasiveness of intellectual 
ability than of the gentler influences of delicacy, dependence 
and sympathy. Beautiful, cultivated, tasteful, and artistic, 
in body and mind, they seem to have all the substantial of 
female excellence from principle, and choice, and habit, 
rather than from impulse and instinct — and they enjoy and 
deserve more freedom, and more of the confidence, and less 
of the surveillance, of their husbands, than anywhere else in 
Italy. The society of Bologna is not, I believe, like that of 
Florence, the refuge and asylum of the damaged reputations 
of high life. This, perhaps, might be expected, where the 
sex enjoy such honors, and are so cultivated and utilized 
in literature, science, and art. 



268 UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. 

The University of Bologna — where these distinguished 
women figured as professors — is the oldest in Italy. Six hun- 
dred years ago it was the largest that had ever existed then, 
and was larger than any whicli has since existed — number- 
ing at that time ten thousand students, from all parts of 
Europe — whose studies were principally confined to civil 
and canon law. It was by this great array of students, 
going out, from the lectures of old Irnerius — called Lucerna 
juris — lamp of the law — that the Roman law was carried 
forward in its triumph over the nations. It was here, too, 
on his suggestion, that the academical degrees, Bachelor, 
Master, and Doctor, were invented and conferred, as the hon- 
orable distinctions of real merit — in the first place the 
degrees in the Civil Law and in the Canon Law — subse- 
quently those of Medicine, next, and finally, those of Theol- 
ogy and the Arts — the seven liberal arts — Grammar, Dialec- 
tics, Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astrono- 
my. Here the taliacotian operation was invented, and the 
operation for the cataract also, and here galvanism took its 
name from Galvani, the philosopher, who discovered it. 
Here, also, in its medical school, anatomical dissection, 
which had been confined to the bodies of animals, was first 
practised upon the human body. It must, now be a fine 
place to study surgery, as it is said there are five hundred 
cases of stabbing brought to the hospital annually. 

The university has now only some five hundred students. 
These, however, do not include the medical students, who 
are five hundred, or thereabouts. The lecture-rooms are, 
many of them, quite small — only room enough for some 
fifteen or twenty students to sit around a table and be in- 
structed by a professor at the same table — a mode of study 
which seems to me exceedingly confidential, familiar, coach- 
ing, and thorough. Some are somewhat larger, and the 
anatomical theatre will seat about two hundred. This is a 



EMINENT MEN. 269 

great falling off from the ten thousand students, six hundred 
years ago. There is an exceedingly interesting and useful 
practice here, long in use, of painting the arms or names of 
the most distinguished graduates on small escutcheons, and 
placing them on the walls and on the lofty and spacious 
corridors and staircases of the University, as memorials of 
honor. The walls are covered with them. They seemed 
to me almost innumerable. This cannot fail to be a power- 
ful incentive to emulation and industry. 

The University has fine libraries and collections for the 
study of science and Natural History, and its bodies of 
professors in the great faculties of instruction, all along 
through the ages of seven hundred years, have been among 
the most able and distinguished men of their generations. 

The Bolognese school of art is as unsurpassed for its 
level of merit as for the great number of its native artists 
of the highest class. A list of the greatest names among 
her juris-consults, her philosophers, her men of letters and 
science, her scholars, her discoverers and inventors, would 
not be interesting — but I cannot omit to say that the three 
Carracci, Guido, Dominichino, Albani, Guercino, Tiarini, 
Cignani, and the most eminent of their immortal pupils, 
were natives of this little city. Eight Popes — Honorius II. , 
Lucius II., Alexander V., Pius V., Gregory XIII., Inno- 
nocent IX., Gregory XV. , Benedict XIV". — sprang from 
Bologna, and cardinals without number. Her meritorious 
distinction as the Mother of Studies, was, at the same time, 
the cause and the effect of her bearing proudly on her arms 
and on the banners of her glory and of her triumphs, 
" Bononia docet," Bologna teaches. These words are em- 
broidered in the waving borders of the flag, while in the 
centre, in golden letters, and radiant with glory, is blazoned 
the single word Libertas — liberty. 

These are the source of her power, and these are the 



270 EDUCATION AND LIBERTY. 

glory that she emulates — " Bologna teaches," and it will 
always be true that Bologna teaches. She will never cease 
to teach — her university may cease to exist — her long line 
of learned men may end — her temples and institutions may 
have no present name or life — still she will teach — hef 
schoolmasters of art and science and letters, seated in glory 
all along through the ages — in their works and their pupils, 
will teach forever, the highest and most useful lessons. 
Education and Liberty — these have given her her solid 
prosperity — that elastic life which, in her destructive wars 
with her neighbors — and in the sackings and massacres of 
civil strife, have given her self-reliance and internal re- 
sources, sufficient for the day of her distress and desertion, 
as well as the day of her dependence. Faithful to her 
sacerdotal King of Rome — yet always with a difference — 
with a consent and not a submission — nothing has been able 
to prevent her men or her women from studying and teach- 
ing and doing as they pleased. Faithful to the Roman 
Catholic Church and the Pope of Rome, it has been from 
an intelligent and devout religious attachment, not from any 
slavish fear of the thunders of the Vatican nor any ignor- 
ant and blind submission to mere priestly demands. 

Here, as elsewhere, I had no time to seek society, and did 
not desire it — and what I say of the state of society, and 
of the intellectual characteristics of the people, I take from 
the observations of others, and allude to them here, only as 
the natural and desirable results of those educational and 
political arrangements and intellectual tastes to which I 
have given my hasty glance, and as a striking instance of 
such results. 

On a hill, commanding the city and a large horizon, is 
the church of San Michele in Bosco, and the suppressed 
monastery of the Olivetans — order of Mount Olivet — once 
one of the finest and richest specimens of monastic splen- 



SAN MICHELE IN BOSCO. 271 

dor. It is now the villa of the Pontifical Governor of 
Bologna. "We drove out to it to see it in its present condi- 
tion. It was the French invasion that desecrated this 
beautiful spot, consecrated to religion. Its cloisters and 
halls were occupied as barracks and hospitals and prisons — 
its halls were stripped of their paintings, which were carried 
to Paris, and the numerous and beautiful frescoes of the 
Carracci and Guido, and their schools, are water -soaked 
and cracked, and streaked, and gone to cureless ruin. These 
frescoes are still shown as specimens of these masters, but 
to my eye they seemed of no account whatever. We were, 
nevertheless, much interested in our visit to the place itself, 
in view of its transmigrations, and much also in the beauti- 
ful view of the city and the plains around and beyond it, 
and the Appenines in the distance, piercing the skies and 
sloping down into the plains. I shall not attempt to de- 
scribe it to you, and shall only say that it unites all the 
beauties which we consider characteristic of the best Italian 
views — the luxuriant plain, the hill and the mountain — the 
grove and the forest — all lighted up by the Italian sun — 
mellowed and softened by that translucent haze which you 
see in the pictures of Claude — while in the near distance 
lies the beautiful city, with its palaces and towers, and 
churches and walls, and bridges and canal, and the river 
washing the walls — all clear and fresh, and sharp in their 
outlines — and in the foreground is spread out, green and 
delicious, the luxuriance and fragrance of Italian vegetation. 
There are many celebrated excursions in the environs — 
which were recommended to us — but we were compelled to 
forego them for want of time. Let me say again, come to 
Italy in the genial and beautiful season of flowers, and fruits 
and luxuriance. 

Within the walls, the public places, on which are situated 
most of the public buildings, are very noble. The only 



272 ACADEMY OF ARTS. 

promenade making any claim to rurality is the Montagnuola, 
quite a spacious and a little elevated sort of park, or place 
of recreation, prettily enough laid out and furnished with 
seats — connected with it and a portion of it is the Piazza 
d'Arrni, or military parade ground. 

The Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, has a collection 
of modern paintings, justly celebrated as one of the first in 
Italy. If, instead of a hurried glance at the immense gal- 
leries of Rome, Naples, and Florence, I could have studied 
them carefully, I should, even more than now, have regret- 
ted that I had not time to give a like study to the treasures 
of the Pinacothek of Bologna, in which are now collected 
a large portion of the chef-d'ceuvres that were liberated 
from convents and monasteries and churches on the suppres- 
sion of religious houses, some sixty years or more ago. In 
the seventy-five churches of the city, and in the palaces, 
and in the religious houses still maintained, are still to be 
found great numbers of the choicest works of the Bolognese 
artists, as well of marble as on canvas. These are so scat- 
tered that it was impossible to think of visiting many of 
them, and we gave what time we could to the public collec- 
tion of the Academy. This embraces three hundred and 
sixty-four paintings, besides the best modern productions 
which are there collected. There are prizes awarded annu- 
ally for the productions of the highest merit, and the prize 
paintings are added annually to the collection, where they 
are preserved with the name of the successful competitor- 
The whole arrangement is one, it seems to me, very well 
calculated to excite and keep up a worthy spirit of emula- 
tion, and I was greatly pleased with many of these works 
of modern artists. In spite of myself, I admire the fresh- 
ness of the new more than the smokiness of the old, other 
things being equal. While I can well see that there is a 
cultivation and a knowledge of art and of its rules, which 



OLD AND NEW MASTERS. 273 

will sometimes turn from the modern to the ancient, there 
is, more often, an ignorance and cockneyism which admires 
the old only because it is old, and turns away from the 
fresh and untarnished because it is pure and unspotted. We 
ought to be more ready to admire the works of modern art- 
ists, where they possess great excellence, because they are 
modern, that we may by our approving voices encourage 
the attainment of the highest excellence by the men of our 
own generation, and, if possible, destroy that false and 
dwarfing impression that the excellence of the ancients is 
impossible to be reached. For myself, other things being 
equal, I should greatly prefer a modern work of art to an 
ancient one — one by my neighbor and compatriot, to one by 
any old pagan heathen, of Greek or Roman fame. We 
have only to do as the ancients did — paint for the tastes, 
the philosophy, the religion, the history, and the social in- 
stincts of the times in which we live, with careful industry 
and profound study, and we shall go on from strength to 
strength and rise from one degree of excellence to another, 
as they did, and, perhaps rival them as much in the fine 
arts, as we do in the useful arts and in practical science. 

It is with the sculptures of Thorwaldsen and Canova, and 
Powers and Crawford, as it is with the fine paintings of 
modern artists, their newness and freshness of color and 
finish, contrast so with the colors, mellowed by age and soft- 
ened by time, of the old works of the great masters, that in 
spite of yourself you almost consider their excellence as 
a sort of parvenu and upstart aping of what all have so 
long considered the unattainable beauty of the old masters 
— forgetting that the works of the old masters came from 
their hands with the same freshness and newness, and re. 
ceived the stamp of perpetual admiration, in part, because 
they were thus fresh, and would now be really more striking 
and beautiful if that freshness still remained. This obvious 

12* 



274 MADONNA PI SAN LTJCA. 

thought was forcibly presented to my mind, not only here 
but in Florence, as I admired the very excellent works of 
those living artists to which I have referred, and compared 
them with the works of other older and more celebrated 
artists. 

The genius of the old masters and the glory of the Bolog- 
nese school of art make an exceedingly interesting display 
in the galleries of the academy — I have never seen old paint- 
ings that seemed to me more worthy of admiration and study 
than some of those which I saw there. In the collection 
are eight specimens of Guereino — two of Augustin Carrac- 
ci — six of Annibal Carracci — thirteen of Louis Carracci — 
eleven of Guido — eleven of Tiarini — three of Domenichino — 
and here is the original of St. Cecilia, the masterpiece of 
Raphael. 

Bologna is also quite distinguished for the excellence of its 
copies of pictures. A copy by Louis Carracci of one of 
Saint Luke's portraits of the Virgin is on the walls of the 
Academy, which leads me to say that had I known when in 
Rome of the Church of La Madonna di San Luca and its 
Portico, I should have withheld what I said of St. Luke as 
an artist till I had arrived at a city that does so much honor 
to one of his pictures. The church is on Monte della Gu- 
ardia, about three miles distant, and specially honored in 
possessing that dark and smoky old portrait of the Virgin, 
said to be painted by the accomplished apostle himself, of 
which Carracci made a copy. There is a painting — not 
there — representing St. Luke painting the portrait of the 
Virgin and Child. The Virgin, in the ripeness and sweet- 
ness of early womanhood with the baby Savior in her arms, is 
standing for her portrait, while the Evangelist is seated, 
without an easel. His canvas, resting on his knee, is held 
by his left hand while with his right he holds his pencil. By 
the side of the Virgin is a table on which is a richly bound, 



THE PORTICO. 275 

open volume of modern form — possibly a presentation copy 
from the artist, of his Gospel and the Acts. I mention this 
picture with its composition and accessories, only as evidence 
that Saint Luke, the beloved physician, painted the Madon- 
na de San Luca now at Monte della Guardia ! In honor 
of this ancient specimen of evangelistic art, in 1674, was 
commenced the portico leading to the church, which is the 
depository of the sacred relic. This portico is twelve feet 
wide and fifteen feet high, and extends from the Porta di 
Saragozza to the church, a distance of about three miles. It 
consists of an unbroken series of arches and chapels, not on 
a straight line nor on a dead level, but adapted to the sur- 
face of the ground. There are six hundred and thirty-five 
arches. It was finished in 1739, and cost two hundred and 
sixty thousand dollars, in a country and at a time when la- 
bor and materials were at hardly more than nominal prices. 
The action of the Senate, the donations of the city authori- 
ties, and of the religious houses, the voluntary contributions 
of the people and benefits at the theatres, all along for more 
than sixty years, concurred to furnish means to build this 
magnificent passage to that little dingy portrait. Once 
a year, even now, in enlightened Bologna, the picture is 
borne in triumph through the long arches of that portico, 
to the city, and all Bologna is delirious with joy at the 
honor and blessing of such a visit. It is a grand festival 
occasion. 

We left Bologna about eight in the morning, in the coupe 
of the diligence, for Padua, whence we go by rail to Venice. 
From Bologna to Ferrara we jogged industriously on through 
a level and fertile country, covered with luxuriant crops of 
hemp, grain, rice and hay, with nothing of special interest 
to notice, and arrived at the old city, Ferrara, in time for an 
early dinner, which we took at our leisure, and we also had 
time to take a stroll through the city, once so magnificent 



276 FEKRAR.4. 

and prosperous, now so deserted and decayed. In its best 
days it contained one hundred thousand people — now per- 
haps little more than thirty thousand. Its streets are wide, 
spacious, and light — built up with lofty and noble palaces — 
but the streets are solitary, the grass actually grows up 
green upon its pavements, and the palaces look neglected, 
forgotten, and crumbling. With the exception of a small 
central portion of the city, the population is exceedingly 
sparse — here and there an inhabited house, in compactly 
built streets. In the days of its glory, its Ducal court was- 
equal to any in Europe for its cultivation and taste. Its 
university was one of the largest and most celebrated in 
Europe. Its art and artists were so meritorious as justly 
to be raised in history to the dignity of a school of art, and 
the great names that adorn its history are of those who are 
justly considered as immortal. It would require a stay oi 
days — instead of a mere rest for dinner — to go over its lo- 
calities and admire their proper beauties and objects of 
interest, and associate them with the once living celebrities 
that at different times made Ferrara their home for longer or 
shorter periods. We went into the dungeon prison of Tasso, 
and wrote our names on its low brick arch — lighted only 
from the door — tempted to do so by the great multitude oi 
names already there, among which we saw the autograph of 
Lord Byron, and those of other celebrated travellers. There 
are those who insist that the imprisonment of Tasso, in this 
dungeon, is a fabrication, because of ils incredible cruelty, 
and because this prison, if prison it was, was so dark and 
unwholesome that he could hardly have lived in it for the 
long period mentioned in the inscription, much less could 
have written there, as he is said to have clone. It is easy 
to believe any such tradition in Italy to be fabricated, but I 
wonder that one who knows anything of the prisons and 
cruelties of the middle ages, can find in any rigor or in- 



FERRY ACROSS THE PO. 277 

humanity, any reason to doubt the sufferings of Tasso, or 
the barbarity of Alfonso. 

"We took a hurried look at the cathedral — seven hundred 
years old — and we went through the courts and gates and 
passages of the old ducal palace, and took a look at the 
room which John Calvin occupied, while, under the name of 
Charles Heppeville, he resided here, and received the dis- 
tinguished protection and favor of the royal Duchess, who 
did so much to favor the cause of the reformation. 

Ferrara may, one day, be whelmed by the waters of the 
Po — the bed of which is on a higher level than the roofs of 
the houses. The country is low, and the river, in its rapid 
course of four hundred miles, brings along a great mass of 
earthy material, which, deposited in sediment, has constantly 
raised the bed of the river, and as constantly the people 
have raised the banks of the stream to prevent its overflow — 
so the great and rapid river runs between artificial banks, 
like a gi'eat aqueduct, far above the level of the surround- 
ing country. If, in some time of great flood, these banks 
should burst away, Ferrara, as well as the plains, would be 
entirely buried beneath the water. 

Some three or four miles from Ferrara, on the southerly 
bank of the Po, is the papal frontier custom-house, at 
Ponte Lagoscuro — the Po divides the Papal States from 
Lombardo- Venetian Austria — and here leaving Cispadan 
Gaul, we crossed the Po and found ourselves at the Aus- 
trian frontier station — a solitary building, a few rods from 
the river. 

We crossed the Po at Ponte Lagoscuro, in a rickety old 
rattletrap of a ferry-boat. After I got aboard the boat, 
seeing no horse-power, no steam engine, no strong-armed 
oarsmen to row the large, scow -like contrivance across, I 
waited with some curiosity to see how we were to be pro- 
pelled, and before I had observed that we had begun to 



278 AUSTRIAN FRONTIER. 

move, we quietly struck the shore on the other side. I then, 
for the first time, observed that we swung at the end of a 
long rope hawser, fastened to something in the middle of the 
river, some five hundred feet up the stream, and the mere 
force of the current, by the means of a rudder, had quickly 
taken us across. In like manner, in the course of the after- 
noon, we crossed the Adige, soon after passing Rovigo. 

We debarked from the diligence and waited, I don't know 
how long — an hour or two. The custom-house was open 
and airy, windows up, officers and clerks at their desks — 
open rooms on each side of a wide hall, from front to rear. 
I looked about to while away the time. I walked the cool 
hall. I looked in on the right hand and on the left — look- 
ing up and down and round about wherever a window or 
door permitted. I observed that I was eyed askance by the 
officials, and I thought the head man looked at me impa- 
tiently. Finally, I stepped inside the public office, where 
they were busy writing, and glanced around an instant, 
without saying anything. This brought matters to a crisis, 
and the chief man, in a rough and peremptory manner, 
suddenly asked me " What is your profession ? " I gave 
promptly and positively, but respectfully, the answer that I 
was a lawyer. This seemed to account for my impudence, 
and to silence and to content him. I thought he suspected 
me of being some dangerous person, some conspirator, or 
brigand in disguise, taking note of his two-and-sixpenny 
little frontier custom-house, with a view to a revolution or 
to plunder, and put his sudden question to entrap me into an 
answer which should betray me. We were at last properly 
vised, and we moved onward over the plains of Transpadan 
Gaul. The face of the country is flat, sometimes marshy, 
and always monotonous, which reconciled us to the neces- 
sity of travelling in the night, to get on the more quickly 
to Venice. 



AUSTRIAN ITALY. 

"TTTE arrived at old Padua, Italian Padova, the Patavi- 
V V um of the ancients, an hour after midnight, and 
the cars for Venice were to leave at half-past three in the 
morning. The city Avas still lighted and the Grand Coffee 
house — not a hotel — near the Diligence office was brilliant 
with lights, and full of people sitting and moving in its bril- 
liant arcades, like a fabulous temple of fairy land, in strik- 
ing contrast with the quaint and obsolete look of most of 
the streets of the faded old town. We decided not to seek 
a hotel, but with a porter and a guide, to relax our cramped 
and weary limbs by a walk to the railroad depot, which 
took us the whole length of the city, a long mile, I should 
think, perhaps more. We started in the gleam of the lamps, 
which revealed the architecture of the old city and lighted 
up the arcade sidewalks, and sent an angling and diminish- 
ed ray into the narrow side lanes and streets, and while this 
lasted, the walk was not only interesting but agreeable — but 
soon light after light went out and the streets became dim 
and shadowy, and darker and darker and finally, dark — 
black-dark. How use doth breed a habit in a man ? In 



280 PADUA. 

days bye-gone, when I had only heard of Italy and its sti- 
lettos and robbers and assassins, I should have shuddered to 
think of this unnecessary groping with my wife, and my 
baggage, and, of course, some money, in the depth of a dark 
night through an Italian city, with every part of which* 
and eveiy one of its inhabitants, I was totally unacquainted. 
But we had no fear, so far and so variously and so safely 
had we travelled. We were, however, all the while con- 
scious that we were not afraid, which, perhaps, is proof that 
unconsciously we had a feeling of danger. All went well 
with us, however, and once arrived at the depot, we gather- 
ed our traps about us, fell into a cloze and waited quietly 
for the early train from Verona for Venice. 

There is much that is interesting in Padua — the burial- 
place of Antenor, its founder — the birth and burial-place of 
Livy. I should have been glad to look through its ancient 
University and its other celebrities of art and genius. It 
would be well to spend a day there — two or three, if one 
had leisure — half a day would have been something — for 
the city has less than forty thousand inhabitants — but I 
could not stop even to look at it by daylight. How long 
should I not stay in Italy, if I stopped to see everything de- 
liberately 1 

We took the cars at about half-past three in the morning, 
and arrived at Venice as the morning sun was just glancing 
on its liquid streets, and gilding the tops of its palaces and 
temple?. The cars approach the city in a southeasterly di- 
rection, over a causeway or bridge across the lagoon, about 
two and a half miles long. This bridge is composed of fine 
arches of brick and stone, the foundation for which is laid 
upon piles driven into the muddy bottom of the lagoon, in 
an average depth of about thirteen feet water. There are 
two hundred and twenty-two arches, of about thirty-two 
feet span. The arches are circular. It took an average of 



VENICE. 281 

one thousand men, laboring daily four and a half years, to 
build it. A portion of it was badly shattered by the Aus- 
trians in the siege of 1849. 

During the few moments occupied by our train in running 
over this bridge, our eyes rested upon the waters of the la- 
goon on either side, and we were forced to form from the 
hurried fancies of the moment, a Venice — a city in the sea — 
such as maps and pictures and stories and descriptions had 
constructed in our minds, when we had no dream of ever 
looking upon the world-renowned reality. It is needless to 
say that we had formed no correct idea of its appearance or 
its characteristic peculiarities. 

Our luggage and passports attended to at the railway 
station, we took a gondola and silently and softly glided 
through the whole length of the Grand Canal, which in the 
serpentine form of the letter S passes quite through the 
heart of the city, and presents a succession of the most 
striking and beautiful views — full of Venetian peculiarities. 
We were landed at the piazza San Marco, and took our 
lodgings at the excellent Albergo — hotel— San Marco — 
fronting on the public square, so celebrated as the centre of 
Venetian elegance and public resort — the Square of Saint 
Mark. We had rooms looking upon the square — our floors 
were of beautiful marquetry and our bedsteads of light and 
graceful polished brass, and other furniture to match. As 
it was still an early hour in the morning we took an hour or 
two of sleep before our breakfast, that we might have fresh- 
ness and vigor for the sight of the Silent City. 

Not quite silent — but silent by comparison. To citizens 
of New-York nothing can seem more silent than a city, 
where no rattling omnibus — no monotonous railroad car — 
no lumbering wagon — no loaded and tugging drays or carts 
— no stylish equipages — no fast men with 2:40 horses — not 
the rolling of a wheel or the foot-fall of a hoof, shall strike 



282 ISLANDS AND LAGOONS. 

upon the ear from morning till night — where the men go to 
and fro to their business and the ladies to make their visits and 
do their shopping in boats ! Old as the scene is — celebrated 
for ages as Venice is in the history of wealth, of commerce, 
of war, of art — familiar as we are with her as she stands 
out in history — still to every stranger, Venice — a city with- 
out horses or carriages — is a novelty of the most striking 
kind. No wonder that — 

" From all days and climes 
She was the voyager's worship." 

There are, indeed, narrow lanes and alleys and passages and 
bridges, by which, it is said, you may pass to every house in 
the city by land, without ever entering a boat — but these 
are not the streets. The streets are of water — the carriages 
are gondolas — and the drays and carts are boats. 

The rapid rivers that ages ago brought, as they do now, 
the swollen torrents and the abraded debris of the ranges 
and spurs of the Alps and Appenines, into the head of the 
Adriatic Sea, shoaled its harbors and dotted its littoral wa- 
ters, bays, and deltas, with sand-bars and islets, which form la- 
goons and channels of varions depths. Fugitives from the 
sword of the barbarians who rushed down upon the Italian 
cities fourteen hundred years ago, sought shelter in the al- 
most inaccessible midst of these islands, lagoons, and chan- 
nels, and there commenced to build this wonderful city, 
which now — built upon piles — covers seventy-two of these 
islands and shoals. 

" A glorious city in the sea, 
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets 
Ebbing and flowing — and the salt sea-weed 
Clings to the marble of her palaces. 
No track of men — no footsteps to and fro 
Lead to her gates. The path lies o'er the sea." 



GRAND CANAL. 283 

So Rogers wrote before the railroad had bridged the wide 
lagoon. 

The Grand Canal is broad and deep — the great thorough- 
fare of business and fashion and pleasure — the Broadway of 
Venice. It is spanned by but one bridge — the bridge of the 
Rialto, crossing the Canal at the famous Eialto, " where 
merchants most did congregate," and where Antonio, rated 
Shylock about his moneys and his usances. The island of 
Rialto was the largest and the first of the islands on which 
the city was built, and, centuries ago, was considered the 
city proper — was the centre of commerce, manufactures and 
exchange — and, in the days of Venetian glory, was crowded 
from morning to night with her royal merchants. Its com- 
mercial glory is gone. It is neglected and dilapidated, and 
the merchants come there no more. 

Besides the Grand Canal there are one hundred and forty- 
six other and smaller canals running through the city in all 
directions, like the streets of a city on the land, and these 
canals are crossed by upwards of three hundred bridges. 
The bridges are all very steep, that they may be so high as 
to allow the gondolas and boats to pass. The bridge of the 
Rialto, by a single segmental arch of ninety-four feet span, 
crosses the Grand Canal at sufficient height to allow boats 
to pass. It is twenty-one feet above the water. It, of course, 
is very steep. These bridges are cut in easy steps, as they 
are only to be used by foot-passengers. The Rialto Bridge 
is seventy-five feet wide, divided into five portions — a path- 
way twenty-one feet wide through the middle, on each side 
of that is a row of twelve shops or retail stores, extending 
the whole length of the bridge, and outside of the stores, on 
each side, is another pathway eleven feet wide. The little 
shops on this grand bridge are greatly in the way, as they 
prevent the fine panoramic view which might otherwise be 
taken from the bridge — as it is, we get two fine views, one 



284 PAST AND PRESENT. 

from each side of the bridge, taking in the beautiful water 
views, lively with gayety and business, on the water, and, 
magnificent with palaces and other noble piles of imposing 
architecture, coming down to the water's edge. 

When Venice was in her glory and prosperity, this only 
bridge over the Grand Canal was so thronged with passen- 
gers that it was almost impassable — but now you will never, 
on ordinary occasions, be elbowed or jostled by a crowd. 
So it is with everything else here. Venice, in her glory, her 
power, her wealth, her commerce, her art, was Venice in 
her freedom. Venice dilapidated and worn, with little com- 
merce and no power — no artists but in their graves — no 
glory of the present — no dawning twilight of hope for the 
future — no honor but in history — is Venice conquered and 
subdued and humbled — the vassal of a tyrant ! 



* * * * " Thirteen hundred years 
Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears — 
And every monument the stranger meets, 
Church, palace, pillar, as a stranger greets." 



The Doges, in portraits, hang in the magnificent old pal- 
ace halls, where, in the days of their life, they were the 
equals of the proudest monarchs. The portraits are the 
trophies of the conquerors of Venice, left hanging there as 
the most striking record of her humiliation. A simple red 
lozenge of marble in the floor of the vestibule of St. Mark's 
is the monument of one of her proudest triumphs of peace, 
placed there almost seven hundred years ago, when, by her 
mediatory intervention, Pope Alexander III. and the Em- 
peror Frederick the First, after their bitter hostilities were 
reconciled at a personal interview. The Emperor prostra- 
ted himself in submission, on the spot marked by the lozenge, 
and the Pope placed his foot upon his head and repeated the 



PRIDE AND HUMILIATION. 285 

prophetic words of the Psalmist, " Thou shalt tread upon 
the lion and the adder," — words of humiliation to the Em- 
peror — perhaps of warning to the proud lion of Venice. 

When Pope Julius II. asked Donato the Venetian embas- 
sador at Rome, to show the right by which Venice claimed 
the sovereignty of the Adriatic, the witty diplomatist replied, 
" If your Holiness will be so good as to bring the original 
grant of Rome and the States of the Church, made to Pope 
Sylvester by Constantine, you will find written on the back 
of it the grant made to Venice of the Adriatic sea !" Nei- 
ther of them had any title but power. 

Sannazar of Naples, some four hundred years ago, ex- 
pressed his preference of Venice to Rome in these beautiful 
lines — 

" Viderat Adriacis Venetam Neptunus in undia 
Stare urbem, et toto dicere jura mari : 
I nunc, Tarpeiaa quantumvis Jupiter arcea 
Objice, et ilia tua moenia Martis, ait, 
Si Tiberim pelago confers, urbem aspice utramque 
Illam homines dices, banc posuisse Deos." 

As Neptune looked on Venice in her pride, 

Seated upon the Adriatic sea, 
Giving her laws to every sea beside — 

" Come, Jupiter," he said, " I challenge thee 
Bring hither Rome in all her pride, and see 

Her boasted Tiber, by this restless brine — 
Compare the cities and thou shalt agree — 

This queenly city, by the side of thine — 

That built by men — this by the Gods divine." 

When Sannazar wrote Austria was unknown, even as an 
acknowledged monarchy and Venice and Rome could each 
stand up against the world — now, who does them reverence? 
The Eagle of the Hapsburgs flaps its black shadows over an 
immense Empire, and Rome and Venice are permitted to 
tremble in her presence. Venice, as a State, has no exist- 
ence — and Rome, as a State, has no independence and no 



286 CHURCH OF ST. MARK. 

power. When Manini, the last of the Doges, was compelled 
to swear allegiance to Austria, the shock was too much 
for him, and he fell to the ground. 

On the Place St. Mark is the church of St. Mark— for 
the last forty years the cathedral of Venice. It is unlike 
anything we have before seen, being in the Byzantine style 
of architecture and enriched by the plunder of St. Sophia 
of Constantinople — five hundred pillars of oriental marbles, 
verd antique, porphyry and serpentine — two of translucent 
oriental alabaster, fluted in spirals, from the temple at Jeru- 
salem — ancient Armenian and Syrian inscriptions — old 
mosaics and sculptures in bronze and marble, are the various 
tributes which were levied upon the East by the then proud 
republic for the ornamentation of her favorite chapel — for 
originally it was only the Ducal chapel. While it was 
building — it took about two hundred years — every vessel that 
cleared for the East was compelled to bring back pillars and 
marbles for the growing pile which was to cover the last rest- 
ing-place of the bones of St. Mark. It is badly lighted, and 
within, there'is but a dim religious light, which gives only a 
dusky visibility to the interior, whose vaulted roofs are cov- 
ered with mosaics in a gold ground, whose walls are veneer- 
ed with precious marbles whose tesselated pavements and 
quaint curious marquetry are filled with arabesques and sym- 
bols and allegories. In niches and in brackets and on pe- 
destals about the baldaquin and the altar and elsewhere are 
— too dimly seen — the statues of God and man and beast — 
angels and patriarchs and saints and artists — lions and eagles 
and horses and chariots — strange, beautiful and interesting — 
tranquillizing and sacred in its repose and in its dusky and 
even light. 

Near the cathedral stands the Campanile, a lofty tower 
which you ascend by a winding path within its walls, not 
stairs, but a smooth pathway of so gentle ascent that you 



SQUARE OP ST. MARK. 287 

might go up on horseback. The view from it, taking in the 
city with its towers and palaces and canals and the sea and 
the land and the lagoons and the islands and the vessels is 
said to be — it must be — of great interest. I did not go up, 
I was always too weary. 

On three sides of the square and in its immediate vicinity 
are the fashionable shops of Venice. The buildings pro- 
jecting over the sidewalks, shelter them, and make of them 
arcades, brilliant with showy fancy goods of the city retail 
trade, many of which are manufactured in the city and are 
very tasteful. 

In a court which communicates with the square are two 
public wells from which the Venetian water porters of both 
sexes are continually carrying water all through the sur- 
rounding houses. They are a unique and peculiar race, de- 
voted to this occupation, with a costume adapted to it, and 
with their two buckets, one on each end of a bow hanging 
over the shoulder, fore and aft, from the wells they pass to 
and fro the livelong day, from cellar to garret of those lofty 
dwellings, distributing the water where it is wanted. If they 
did not carry the buckets fore and aft, the stairways and 
passages would of course be obstructed and their own pass- 
ing might be difficult. In their ceaseless and unwearying 
routine they contribute their full share of the diversity in 
that public square which is so agreeable to the traveller. 

Another object there is a flock of pigeons that with sur- 
prising tameness fly and hover and alight, now on the ground^ 
now on the cornices and roofs and window caps and sills — 
you might almost stoop and pick one up in your hands, so 
tame are they, yet they are not tame — they have never been 
caught and tamed — but forages untold — the memory of man 
runneth not to the contrary — they and their hereditary ances- 
tral flocks, from generation to generation, have been fed at 
the public expense — no one knows why — and the Venetians 



288 DUCAL PALACE. 

look upon them with a veneration almost as superstitious as 
they would if they divined by their daily flights, and seem 
to love them with as much affection as if each particular 
bird had been hatched in the cages of their drawing-rooms 
— had nestled in their bosoms — cooed in their alcoves — and 
picked its daily food from their open hands. This has given 
them an impunity and familiarity which have become a nat- 
ural tameness, seeming intelligent, confidential and affection- 
ate, on the part of the birds themselves. 

The Ducal palace or palace of the Doge, is an architectu- 
ral pile of great extent, and embracing within its walls and 
in its accessories more than all Venice besides, to remind you 
of her glory in arts and arms — of her power, her tyranny 
and her cruelty. Here is the great council hall, one hun- 
dred and seventy-five feet long, eighty-four wide and fifty- 
one feet high. This was finished more than eight hundred 
years ago. It now contains the library of the government — 
an immense library — ranged in cases around the base of the 
room, while above the book-cases the still great spaces are 
devoted to paintings, which in themselves are remarkable 
mementoes of her riches, her taste and her pride — paintings 
by Titian, the two Tintorettos, Paul Veronese, and other 
great masters, of every variety of subject connected with the 
glorification of Venice. It is this great hall, that is border- 
ed with the portraits of the Doges in succession — except 
that of Marino Faliero, the place of which is supplied by 
a black veil. Large as this room is, it does not give room 
for the whole series of Doges. It is continued and finished 
in the next room, the hall of Scrutiny. This room is also 
adorned with characteristic paintings of the striking scenes 
of Venetian history, as are all the rooms of this spacious 
palace, except the judicial rooms — the prisons and the cham- 
bers of judgment and execution which significantly shadow 
the cruel tyrannies of that despotic Aristocracy which 



PRISONS AND TORTURES. 289 

tolerated no voice of freedom, and no murmur of complaint 
against its patrician power — the Senate Chamber — the hall 
of the Council of Ten — ten tyrants— the Lion's Mouth — 
who was safe from its fearful utterances % — the Tribune — 
the Council-room of three inquisitors — at the same time ac- 
cusers, judges, and executioners. In their small apartment 
secret, silent, and unknown, they sat wrapped in black satin 
and masked, and there they passed their unannounced and 
unrecorded condemnations to death — then from before them, 
by a short cut, a private and dark passage, a short and pre- 
cipitous stairway, their victims were hurried into their dun- 
geons below and there without notice or shrift they were 
decapitated, or perhaps were ordered to sit down in what 
seemed an arm-chair, but in which, as soon as they were 
seated, by concealed and resistless springs they were strang- 
led. And so from day to day — during the long ages of Ve- 
netian glory — in the pozzi, the damp dungeons below and 
the equally terrible sotto piomli, under the leads — the low 
roofed garret prisons — with nothing between the victims and 
the sky but the thin lead of the roof — blistered by the heats 
of the summer, and frozen by the frosts of the winter, the 
poor prisoner sighed and prayed for the day of his final con- 
demnation and death, long after his family and friends had 
feared what had become of him and wondered how he had 
been spirited away from among them. Sometimes they were 
allowed to look out for the last time upon the canal and 
city, and sigh as in their last moments they' passed over the 
bridge from the tribunal to the execution, and hence called 
the bridge of sighs, like the stairway of groans, Scalce gemo- 
nice, of ancient Rome. We went, ourselves, with shudder- 
ing, through this awful and now exploded and harmless 
round of dungeon and tribunal and room of execution, and 
we handled the instruments of torture and death that seemed 
almost impossible to have been made by man for man. 

13 



290 VENETIAN ARTISTS. 

Venice contains immense treasures of paintings. Here is 
the grand centre of Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and Titian^ 
and great collections of other artists. I do not stop to enu- 
merate or to criticise what I have not time to study. Paint- 
ing is to me only a language. I never look upon a paint- 
ing with the eye of an artist to see how more or less per- 
fectly the rules of art are obeyed, and I look upon it only 
to learn what the artist has there said and how intelligibly 
and beautifully he has said it. I forget the artist and his 
art, and look only to the subject — the story that he tells. 
Sometimes I am forced to look at the artist himself, when 
traits of his own personal character are constantly visible in his 
work, or are suggested by the anecdotes of his personal his- 
tory or character which inevitably come to mind as you 
stand before the work. 

In one of my letters from Rome I spoke of the singular 
wickedness of artists in making their best works the vehicle 
of private malice, an evidence, not only of their evil and 
malignant disposition, but also of their great estimation, in- 
asmuch as they were permitted to do so with impunity. It 
is no less strange, that such men should not only choose the 
Last Judgment as a subject for their powers, but use that 
very subject for purposes of malice, as did Michael Angelo 
in the Sistine Chapel. So here — in an immense picture, 
sixty feet by thirty — of the same subject, Tintoretto intro- 
duces his own wife three times, it is said, in three stages of 
her progress, commencing with the happiness of their first 
love, and ending with pitching her headlong into hell. So 
the Judgment, by Giotto, at Padua, is made the vehicle of 
the bitterest satire upon the Roman Catholic clergy, he 
himself being, of course, a Catholic. And Andrew Orcagna 
— in an altar piece, in Santa Maria Novella at Florence — 
has indulged in the same satire, and has mingled with demons 
on the left hand, bishops, abbots, monks, and nuns, and also 



PAINTINGS OF THE JUDGMENT. 291 

grotesque fiends, one of whom is dragging from his grave a 
corpse that seems determined to make the grave his final rest- 
ing-place, notwithstanding the judgment trumpet is breaking 
up old marble — the repose of princes. The same artist, in Lis 
" Judgment" at Pisa, allows a Franciscan monk to rise 
among the blessed on the right, but he is politely walked 
over to the other side by the archangel. In another place, 
an angel and a demon have a fat friar by the legs and arms, 
each tugging with might and main to secure him. In this 
respect, there was, doubtless, more freedom in those days 
than in these, for now no artist would be allowed thus to 
deal with the religious orders, and the fool-hardy artist that 
should attempt it, would be likely to be handed over to the 
tender mercies of the Inquisition. It is, indeed, possible 
that, in this particular, some of them only designed to teach 
the great solemn, religious truth, that not the outer garb of 
priest or monk, but the inner sanctification — not the religious 
order, but the truly religious life and heart were necessary 
to secure an entrance into the New Jerusalem, as the pure 
minded and deeply religious Fra Angelico da Fiesole, in his 
treatment of the Last Great Day, taught, with beautiful and 
striking emphasis, the equally solemn truth, that the sinner, 
even if he should steal into heaven, would, in its holy light, 
find his character so transparent and devilish, that no con- 
cealment could save him from being thrust out. That artist 
has placed among the blessed, a group of an angel dragging 
out a sinner who has, apparently, hoped to pass in the crowd, 
a group powerful in truth and feeling, and striking in con 
ception. As there was not in the mind of the artist, so 
there cannot be in that of the spectator, any feeling of the 
ridiculous, or the profane, or the frivolous. All these at- 
tempts, however, show how much that scene is above all 
human art. 

Speaking of Fra Angelico, an anecdote or two will exhibit 



«• 



292 FRA AKGELICO. 

his character in some of its most interesting aspects. Pope 
Nicholas V. called him from Florence to Rome to paint the 
finer miniature paintings for the churches, and he offered at 
the same time as a recompense and as a compliment to his 
distinguished merits, to make him a bishop. He was a 
Dominican monk. Brother Angelico declined from sheer 
humility, which habitual virtue is said to have induced him 
always to leave some striking defects in even his best com- 
positions, that no one should be able to give him unmixed 
admiration and praise. An anecdote is told of him as evi- 
dence of his child-like simplicity. Being invited by the 
Pope to dine with him, the artist declined on the ground 
that he could not eat meat, because he had not the permis- 
sion of his superior, not considering that as he was invited 
by the supreme earthly Head of the Church to dine with him> 
no dispensation or permission could be necessary. I do not 
interpret this as evidence of his simplicity, but of his conscien- 
tious and high principled sense of personal integrity and 
duty. When he took the vows of his order he took them to 
keep — not to be flexible and yielding to his convenience and 
pleasure, even on the request of the Pope himself. He 
rarely painted anything but devotional subjects. He never 
commenced painting till he had fully performed all his 
monastic religious duties, according to the rules of his order 
and whenever his subject required him to paint a crucifix, 
he could not do it without his eyes streaming with tears. 

In the Academy of Fine Arts are the greatest treasures of 
art. The Assumption and the St. John, the masterpieces of 
Titian, are there, besides many other of his works which, as 
I have before remarked, with those of Tintoretto and Paul 
Veronese, constitute the solid artistical capital of Venice. 
About their works hang numerous others which, highly 
meritorious though they are, serve really to heighten the 
excellence of those greater masters. Here, as elsewhere, I 



THE GONDOLA. 293 

have been compelled to confine my look to the few greatest 
works. 

"We spent a day in a gondola, on the canals that we might 
fully realize the characteristic travel and street scenery of 
such a city. A gondola is a long, black, narrow, slender, 
and light boat, with a high bow and stern. It is about 
thirty feet long and four wide in the middle, whence it 
tapers to a very sharp point at the bow and at the stern — the 
bow being armed with a broad, thin, and sharp piece of 
iron, cut with four big teeth below and a sort of broad-axe 
blade above, which gives to the approaching bow quite a 
bloody-minded look. The bow is plainly a bastard de- 
scendant of the prow of the ancient Roman galley. About 
midway-way of the boat — a little nearer the stern — is the 
cushioned, seated, and curtained cabin for the passengers. 
This looks some like the body of an old-fashioned coach, and 
more like a modern funeral-hearse, the whole thing — boat, 
canopy, seats, curtains, and all being of a dead black color. 
The gondola, in form, and color, and appointments, I believe 
has not changed for centuries — except, that in a few in- 
stances, are seen colored curtains and trimmings to the little 
cabin. On festal occasions, too, I believe, they deck them 
sometimes with much elegance, giving to the Grand Canal an 
appearance of great variety and liveliness. They are now 
much less numerous than when Venice was in her pride. 
Where there are now only a few hundreds, there were for- 
merly as many thousands. An old historian — Philipe de 
Comines — says that in his time, three hundred and fifty 
years ago, there were thirty thousand. If that be half true 
the canals must have been crowded like Broadway on a 
public day. The gondolier stands erect in the stern of his 
gondola, and with a single oar, which he uses as a paddle, 
manages his boat with great adroitness. There are no sails 
of course. 



294 GONDOLIERS. 

The gondoliers partake something of the character of their 
boats and their employment — being gentle, gliding, and 
graceful in their manner- 1 — they are tasteful and sometimes 
fanciful in their dress — in this respect differing from the race 
of drivers and coachmen, everywhere proverbially coarse, 
ungraceful, and graceless. I never heard from a gondolier, 
anything but words of gentleness and politeness, so far as 
manner was concerned, even to his companions and fellows 
whom he passed as he floated along. They exercise much 
care and attention, too, in landing their passengers with 
safety. The ebb and flow of the tide keep always wet and 
sometimes slippery, the flag-stones upon which the passen- 
gers are to step ashore, and unless the gondola is properly 
brought alongside the step, and kept there, and unless the pas- 
senger wait till the proper time, and step with care, he may 
get a dangerous fall. Lord Byron was once thus slipped into 
the Grand Canal, between the gondola and the shore, to his 
great chagrin and mortification. 

You often find at these more public landing-places a poor 
beggar, quietly stationed there, and always offering his aid 
to secure you a safe and easy landing, for which, of course, 
he expects a small gratuity. I shall always remember, with 
regret, repulsing the well-meant offers of assistance of an 
old mendicant on such an occasion, before I knew the cus- 
tom, supposing his offer was only an officious and imperti- 
nent attempt to levy a small black mail on me by demanding 
as a right, a compensation for an imaginary service, instead 
of asking an alms like a straightforward and honest beggar. 
I looked upon this attempt to make themselves useful, in the 
Venetian beggars, as giving a respectability to beggary in 
Venice, that I had not before seen in Italy. 

Although we had become somewhat familiar with Venice, 
still, gliding about all day in a gondola, in the heart of a 
large city, and hearing no noise but the dip and the drip of 



CHURCH OF THE FRATI. 295 

oars, the dash of the little wavelets on the walls, the low 
hum of voices in conversation, with here and there the cry 
of a waterman, and now and then the sound of the artisan's 
tools, never ceased to be striking and beautiful, and when 
we took in at one thought, the whole thing, it was sublime — 
those palaces, and temples, and towers, rising out of the 
water like a growth, the hoary old Tuscan and Doric piles 
of a thousand years ago, and the graceful and florid Corin- 
thian palaces of more modern times, interchangeably planted 
and rooted in the sea ! Venice would be an impossibility if 
it did not exist. 

In the church of the Frati, the burial-place of Titian, 
we were more interested than in any other church in Venice, 
after St. Mark's. It is principally interesting for the many 
fine sepulchral monuments which it contains. The monu- 
ment to Titian, first opened to view last year, and reared to 
his memory by the Emperor of Austria, is a striking and fit 
memorial of the great Venetian artist, in the church where 
his remains have mouldered away. For centuries a simple 
slab was the only marble in his honor — it is now replaced 
by a noble and graceful Corinthian canopy, under which is a 
sitting statue of the artist, crowned with laurel, surrounded 
by allegorical statues. The statue of Paolo Sarpi, with 
his canons of the Council of Trent, and that of Trevisano, 
in complete armor, are beautiful and striking for their sim- 
plicity. It was this Melchior Trevisano, who brought from 
Constantinople, and presented to this church, its choicest 
relic — some of the real blood of the Savior ! A triumphal 
arch is the appropriate monument of General Benedetto 
Pesaro. The statue of the unfortunate Doge Foscari is a 
noble columnar monument, surrounded by statues. It is 
three hundred and fifty years old. The monument of the 
Doge Nicolo Trovi rises to the height of some seventy feet 
in six stories. It is fifty feet Avide, and is adorned by some 



296 MONUMENT TO PESA.KO. 

twenty full-length statues of semi-colossal size, besides other 
sculptures. A monument, rich in oriental marbles, com- 
memorates Jacob Pesaro. A most striking, singular and 
stupendous monument is that erected to the Doge Giovanni 
Pesaro. One would think it was as much a monument in 
honor of negro slavery as of the Doge, although I am not 
informed that he had any connection with slavery. The 
tomb is supported by brawny and gigantic negroes, sculp- 
tured in black marble, dressed in white marble, ragged and 
rent, through the tatters of which their black knees and 
elbows stick out, and their ebony skins are exposed. The 
monument rests as it were upon cushions, like pillows, on 
their woolly heads, and within sits the Doge in white marble. 
The contrasts are novel, and the whole aspect is striking. 
The most interesting of all is, however, the monument to 
Canova, pure, chaste, graceful, and beautiful, as his own 
masterly genius. It is a pyramid, some twenty-five or 
thirty feet high, of white marble — into its huge door, thrown 
open, a funeral procession, in statues of white marble, as 
large as life, is just entering. Art, Genius, etc., bearing 
an urn, with the ashes of the dead, are the mourners, and 
their arrangement, attitudes, and expressions, are exceedingly 
interesting and solemn. The design was by Canova him- 
self, and was intended for Titian. 

In searching out some of the antique laces, which are 
found in this venerable city, we saw another portion of 
Venitian life and trade. What narrow lanes we threaded, 
what crooked and dingy stairs we climbed, what dusky and 
shady shops we entered, ai»d how we chaffered and bargain- 
ed with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, who professed to 
keep them as hidden treasures. 

On our way to our lodgings we stopped in at the consul's, 
and there encountered a number of our New- York acquaint- 
ances and neighbors who had left America after we did. 



CROSSING THE ADRIATIC. 297 

From them we learned that the rains were still abundant in 
Switzerland, so I abandoned the idea of going by the way of 
Milan, to the land of torrents and glaciers, and avalanches, 
and determined to leave Venice by steam, crossing the Adri- 
atic sea to Trieste. I soon learned from my valet that a 
steamer left late in the afternoon and another in the morning. 
He thought I would prefer the one in the morning — but I sup- 
posed he thought so because it would be pleasanter to travel 
in the daytime than in the night. I, however, preferred 
not only to have a departing look at Venice by daylight, 
but also a daylight approach to the Austrian shore, instead 
of arriving there in the evening. We went to the office of 
the boat, and I took my passage in the evening boat, though 
it was quite plain that all thought it strange that I should do 
so. An hour later than the time appointed to sail, we were 
taken with our luggage in an open boat — a mile to reach 
the steamer — and for the last half mile in a most pelting 
and pitiless rain. With awkward and dangerous arrange- 
ments — for it was now dark — we were lifted on board, and 
our small boat started hurriedly back for the city. We 
worked our way through a crowd into the cabin — low, small, 
and dark. The steamer was filled with at least a battalion 
of Austrian soldiers — no cabin passengers but our ourselves 
— no state-rooms — no berths — no beds — no supper — no tea 
— no English language — no French — "no nothing" but sol- 
diers. 

It was now plain why they thought I would have taken 
the other boat. The heavy and confused tread of the sol- 
diers on deck, mingling with the raging of the storm, were 
all that interrupted our solemn imaginings in the dark and 
dingy littly cabin, as we waited — oh, how long — for them to 
get under way, almost wishing that we might not move till 
morning, and a hundred times regretting that we had not 
waited for the other steamer — but we could not go ashore. 

13* 



298 MORNING AFTER THE STORM. 

We were at last started, and by signs and a few words that 1 
could stammer out, I succeeded in persuading the steward to 
let M. take temporary possession of a little state-room be- 
longing to the captain, and I followed her in, and we both 
threw ourselves down in our clothes, without any light, hav*- 
ing arranged my traps so that no one could enter without 
my leave. 

While I encouraged M., my own mind could not fail to 
wander over the possibilities of that stormy night — those 
rude Carinthian boors, turned soldiers, if accident should 
loose them from their discipline — that light and complaining 
boat — that sea, of which I knew nothing — those, perhaps, 
unfriendly Austrian shores, whose language I could not 
speak ! and — in the midst of such thick-coming fancies — I 
fell asleep, and M. and I slept quietly and safely till morn- 
ning; — no sea engulfed us — no storm wrecked us — no SOl- 
diers plundered us — no angry surf had thrown us upon 
sandy beach, or craggy rook, or made our final bed in the sea- 
weed. 

We arose and went on deck, and while the evidences of 
the night's sea-sickness made the decks loathsome, what a 
scene burst upon us! The storm had passed away — all the 
hazy vapors of the atmosphere had been condensed, and 
had fallen during the night, the air was transparent, and the 
eye seemed to peer far into the clear blue depths of the sky, 
which only here and there, for beauty, showed a floating 
cloud of chased silver. 

On the left lay Aquileja and Montefalcone, and on the 
right Capo dTstria, and in the near distance lay beautiful 
Trieste, nestling at the foot of the hills in the little bay form- 
ed by the promontories that jut out into the sea — and all 
around lay the various snug crafts of model build and rig, so 
different from our own — and as we neared the land, the de- 
tails of the landscape were revealed — rock, and tree, and 



ST. HELENA AND THE ADRIATIC. 299 

dell — freshly-washed verdure, and spire, and roof, and battle- 
ment, and palace, and temple, and shops, and sails — and the 
lofty mountain-hills behind the city, nearly two thousand 
feet high — stretching off to the right and left — and the ter- 
races that cover their sides, and the highways that wind 
zigzag up the steep ascent, and the houses, and villas, and 
hamlets, that dot and enliven the mountain slopes. The 
contrast with the night was so striking that it doubtless 
heightened the real beauty of the scene — but it seemed to me 
that, without that, it was one of the most beautiful sweeps for 
the eye which we have yet looked upon in Europe. 

I trust we are grateful to the Power that protected us 
during the night, but it never occurred to us that we were 
indebted to the far-seeing and holy kindness of Saint Helena. 
Before her time the Adriatic was the vorago naviganlium 
— the vortex of sailors. " The legend says that when she dis- 
covered the true cross, she found also the nails that had 
pierced the hands and feet of the Savior. Buried in the 
ground for ages, they were not tarnished with rust, while 
those which had held the thieves were wasted with corrosion. 
On her voyage home from the East, as she entered the then 
stormy Adriatic, she was touched with compassion for the 
poor sailors so often tossed on its chafed and angry bosom, 
or buried beneath its waves, and to make it calm and safe 
forever, she threw into the sea one of the sacred nails, and 
ever since, the grateful seafarers have it found free from 
storms. 



AUSTRIA TRIESTE TO VIENNA. 

TRIESTE — pronounced Treest — I had expected to find 
a beautiful place, but the present reality far exceeded 
my anticipations. I know not where you can go and find more 
to admire, in so small a city, than in this. Its streets are so 
wide and beautifully built up — the public buildings and pub- 
lic squares so really tasteful and distinguished in appearance, 
its compact streets of shops and its exhibitions of merchan- 
dise so showy, enterprising, and attractive, and all — I speak 
of the new and larger part of the town — so new, so fresh, so 
bright, and cheerful, and prosperous, and happy in appear- 
ance, as to surprise me hei-e in the Old "World. It is the 
Austrian seaport and is an interesting instance of the effect 
of favored commerce in fertilizing what must otherwise be a 
barren spot. The hotel where we stopped had spacious and 
airy bed-rooms, its floors of beautiful marquetrie, its dining- 
room spacious and beautifully frescoed and furnished, and 
its table furnished with rich plate and porcelain — -in all its 
appointments quite the finest hotel Ave have met since we 
left America. It is owned by a joint-stock company. If my 



RETROSPECT. 301 

plans would have permitted I should have made quite a stay 
here, to rest and refresh ourselves in its balmy breezes, its 
beautiiul surroundings, and its dreamy and quite outlook 
toward Italy — retracing my earnest and curious steps in the 
land of the Gaul and the Italian, in a contemplative, analyt- 
ical, and comparative mood, and drawing more pleasure and 
profit from the reflection which such a retrospect could not 
fail to suggest, than I had derived from isolated and local 
observations on the spot, as I travelled. 

Certainly there is no place where one could seem naturally 
to look down through so many, and so various, and so long 
vistas of the past, all crowded with everything that the 
world knows of the eighteen centuries of our era, to say 
nothing of the more ancient ages of pagan civilization and 
glory. Look back over the trail of the Huns and of the 
Goths, the greatest of all conquering and commanding 
races. Here for the first, I enter their vast dominions, for 
although Trieste has been by turns subject to France, Ven- 
ice, and Austria, and may properly enough be called an 
Italian city, still she has always been ethnologically, as she 
is now politically, a portion of the great Gothic Empire. 
In their old poems, says Tacitus, they give it out as a high 
point that they are the direct descendants from the god 
Tuisto — hence called Teutons — and his son Mannus — hence 
man — as though they united in themselves the great charac- 
teristics of God and of man — hence, perhaps, Teuman, the 
name of the great Hun of two thousand years ago. What a 
story is that of their sweeping over Europe from the Baltic 
to southern Italy, and from the Black sea to the Rhine — 
and how the Avild savages have grown into the great Ger- 
man family ! Look back upon the growth of ancient pagan 
Rome, in the Italian peninsula, yonder, spread out before 
you. She planted her eagles all along the Mediterranean 
and the Atlantic coast, and colonized the British islands, 



302 TRIESTE. 

while — throned on her seven hills — she ruled the world. 
And the Italian republics of the middle ages — you seem 
here to be looking right at them, and to see their strifes 
with the Gaul, and the Guelph, and the Ghibeline. And 
Papal Rome — you can hardly raise your eyes without seeing 
her triple crown, her priestly power, her armies, her armor, 
her knotty scourge, and her keys, as she passed up through 
ages to the culmination of the power of the Pope as king 
of kings, under Hildebrand, and down again to the vassal- 
age of Pius Ninth — all the time, as her temporal power 
increased her spiritual graces failing, and vice versa. It was 
the lust of her temporal power that placed in the chair of 
St. Peter ambitious, corrupt, and blood-thirsty men, and 
took to the battle field ambitious sons of her church, even 
bishops, to mingle in and direct the bloodiest carnage. It 
was a Gothic king, I believe, who having taken in battle 
a bishop in armor, kept him prisoner-of-war, and in reply to 
the Pope's demand of the privilege of the church for the dis- 
charge of his son, sent the bishop's armor, with the pertinent 
and cutting question — " Know now whether this be thy 
son's coat ?" His Holiness now sits in meekness and sub- 
mission in his sacerdotal palaces, and says his prayers with 
Christian humility and forgiveness, while I have just now 
seen conscript youngsters of the French army of surveillance 
skylarking under almost the eave-droppings of St. Peter's at 
Rome, and the cavalry of the Austrian army of occupation 
galloping insolently round the Montagnuola of Bologna. 
The Goth and the Gaul are again masters of Rome — 
kingly Rome. 

Trieste is the Tergeste of the ancients. She has been the 
victim of I do not know how many destructions, and has 
been sacked and plundered by the great conquerors, all 
along through the ages. The Huns, and the Goths, and the 
Francs, and the Lombards, and the Turcs, have in their 



PEOPLE OF TRIESTE. 303 

turn, treated little Trieste — wnen nardly more than a vil- 
lage — as of great importance, and have conquered her and 
levied military contributions upon her. The days of her 
affliction ended Avith her last military ransom to the army 
of the first French Republic. During all these centuries she 
has seemed to be buoyed up by the prophetic hope of her 
destiny, which she is now enjoying in her beauty and her 
commercial prosperity. The Austrian sovereigns, for two 
hundred years — especially Leopold I., Charles VI., Maria 
Theresa, and Joseph II. — have looked to her as the great 
commercial maritime port of the Empire, and have always 
seconded the bright hopes of her people. Leopold I. made 
a special visit to Trieste two hundred years ago, which is 
commemorated by a noble column surmounted by his statue 
in bronze in front of the Exchange — and a monumental 
column of Charles VI. is in the great Square. She has been 
a free port about one hundred and forty years, and she per- 
mits the free exercise of religious worship. This freedom 
has attracted to her enterprising merchants of all countries, 
whose rivalries and successes have given to her her solid 
prosperity, and all her characteristic attractions, with now 
about one hundred thousand people — a little less. 



" Traders of every nation — Turks and Jews, 
Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles and Hindoos," 



have been permitted to meet on the level of the highest com- 
mercial equality. On the days and at the hours of public 
worship, the Lutheran, and the Calvinist, the Greek, the 
Jew, and the Roman Catholic, as in our own country, seek 
their own several places of worship, and in their own way 
worship the God of their fathers, saying to Him in spirit and 
in truth, " There is none to molest or to make afraid." 
The Catholics are about ninety per cent, of the population. 



304 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. 

The Lutheran Church, with its inscriptions and monuments, 
was purchased by the Lutherans of the Catholics. On the 
opposite side of the street to the Catholic Church, Santa 
Maria Maggiore, is the Calvinist Church, purchased of the 
Jesuits. There is, also, a beautiful little English Episcopal 
Church, two Greek Churches, and three Jewish Synagogues. 
Enlightened commerce is a great preacher of Christian tol- 
eration, if not of union or unity. This religious freedom 
was commenced by Maria Theresa, and established and per- 
fected by Joseph II. 

In the Exchange, in the streets and along the wharves, 
you see the various picturesque costumes of the Turk and 
the Egyptian, the Armenian and the Syrian, as well as 
the Greek. The ship " Socrates " I saw there. For the 
convenience of business as well as^society, the better classes 
speak fluently three to six languages, the Italian, the Ger- 
man, the French, the Greek, the English and the Sclavic, 
and their dress uniting the best characteristics of the various 
costumes, is almost romantic in its richness, its exquisite 
taste, its graceful bearing and its spotless and dazzling neatness. 

I noticed here what I do not remember to have ever seen 
in a city before. I had seen oxen used more variously 
than with us. In crossing the Appenines a yoke of oxen 
was added for an extra pair of leaders to take our diligence 
up the mountain steeps, which was a little odd. In Italy I 
had often seen an ox harnessed sometimes with a horse, and 
sometimes with a donkey — but here in Trieste oxen appear 
to be the usual beasts of burthen for the dray service of the 
streets — and, what struck me as a useful economy for the 
drayman of small means, was the practice of working a 
single ox, as we work a single horse in the cart or dray ser- 
vice of our cities. A single ox hardly costs a quarter the 
price of a good horse, will draw quite as large a load — is 
even more reliable and trustworthy — is maintained at less 



STARTING FROM TRIESTE. 305 

expense — is more hardy and patient, and when his life ceases 
to be useful his death brings back, in the price of beef, all 
his original cost. Here they have the Roman mouse color, 
and are often crossed with the buffalo. You see them lying 
down at their drays and chewing the cud all about the pub- 
lic wharves. The single ox is harnessed between the shafts 
of his dray, and in solitary usefulness moves solemnly 
through the streets and along the wharves, dragging his four- 
wheeled dray, the wheels not more than eighteen inches in 
diameter, and his wagon body, often a vast wicker basket of 
unpeeled willow twigs, light and strong and capacious. So, 
too, a pair of oxen is worked in a long, low, narrow wagon. 
I saw, also, many men harnessed to smaller drays with basket 
bodies and wheels not more than fifteen inches high — and 
one or two men on each side of the pole or tongue, tugging 
away with ropes or other tackle over the shoulder. It 
struck us as strange, perhaps slavish, but after all, it was 
only a little change of form — in substance not differing 
much from our porters with their handcarts, so numerous in 
all our own cities, tugging at their voluntary loads. 

In a pleasant afternoon, after an early dinner, our bag- 
gage all leaded — sealed with leaden seals — that it might go 
without further molestation, we took our seats in our favor- 
ite coupe of the diligence for Laybach, and commenced our 
long and toilsome journey through the wild, steep and rocky 
spurs of the Austrian Alps. We wound up the cultivated 
side of the steep mountain behind the city, in a zigzag course 
which seemed endless — for two hours, at every turn of the 
road Trieste was in sight, and at Optschina, on the top, two 
thousand feet high, and only five miles off, the beautiful 
town, diminished by the distance, seemed actually to lie at 
our feet, at the foot as it were of a precipice, so near that 
we could almost throw a stone to it. Here is a custom- 
house, at which we were all compelled to debark from the 



306 VIEW FROM THE EAST. 

stage for an examination of the carpet-bags and other little 
packages, which being in our rooms at the hotel, had not 
been looked at and sealed at Trieste. Perhaps some of the 
passengers had not been sealed as we had. All the pas- 
sengers left the stage, and the opportunity was taken by 
the officials to explore the numerous pockets of the diligence 
for the chance packages of valuables that the passengers 
might have quietly stowed away, after being, as they sup- 
posed, fully franked by the seals at the city below. They 
found nothing in our sacks, and were not at all troublesome 
to us — but when we returned to our seats it was quite ap- 
parent that every cranny had been explored in our absence. 

Beautiful as I had found the view of the city and its sur- 
roundings, when seen from the steamer on the Adriatic 
looking eastward, it was no less so from the top of the moun- 
tain, looking westward, embracing a wider range and ex 
hibiting in its variety more striking contrasts. I can well 
imagine how rapturously this scene must strike the traveller 
from the east, when, after wearisome days and nights spent in 
the wild, barren and desolate regions of Styria, Carinthia, 
Carniola and Istria, he comes to the brow of the mountain 
overlooking Trieste, where suddenly bursts upon his sight 
the beautiful city, its harbor and its shipping, the bright sea 
receding to a maritime horizon at the southward and west- 
ward, its northern shores sloping up to an Alpine hoiizon 
and its eastern shore jutting out in the numerous beautiful 
promontories that shoot sharply out into the glassy deep. 

"We had hardly left the custom-house before we entered 
upon the great wilderness, embracing the Julian Alps lying 
between Trieste and Laybach. It is a barren, stony, moun- 
tainous region. Steep and ragged hills and mountains^ 
sharp in their summits, narrow in their valleys and precipi- 
tous in their winding defiles. The rock is a lightish gray 
limestone, which in its usual disintegrations has formed a 



MOUNTAIN REGIONS. 307 

lighter, almost white, limestone sand, which occupies the 
place of a soil and forms the bed and banks of the road. — 
We were riding with our backs to the sun, bearing all the 
while to the northward and eastward in the afternoon — or 
we should have found the reflections of a summer sun from 
the white particles, as oppressive as other travellers have 
found them. To us it was only a monotonous curiosity. 

This is the outlet for the immense lumber forests of Aus- 
tria, and over these rugged, steep and narrow roads, the lum- 
ber is hauled by teamsters from mountains far inland, to the 
port of Trieste, and merchandise for the people is hauled to 
the scattered towns and settlements of the interior in return. 
The only thing to enliven our weary journey was these loads 
of lumber — hoop-poles and hoops, and spars, and merchan- 
dise, tugging along without intermission — sometimes drawn 
by oxen, sometimes by horses, in immense wagons with tires 
a full foot in width, drawn by eight huge horses. Sometimes 
a single spar of immense length and size would constitute 
the full load of a full team, and sometimes loads of smaller 
spars, all driven by shaggy and bearded boors, unkempt and 
Avild looking, in slouched hats and coarse dress, such as 
abound in the sketches of Moritz Retsch. We had no op- 
portunity to make their acquaintance. They are reported 
to be filthy, rude and repulsive. 

As in Trieste so here I was struck with the narrowness 
of the wagons — I suppose there must be some reason for it 
besides the narrowness of the roads, but I can think of noth- 
ing but inconvenience to result from reducing the width of 
a wagon to not more than two feet and a half between the 
wheels, which is a common width here, the capacity being 
made up in length. To my eyes they had a very awkward 
appearance; The wagons of the farmers along the way are 
of the same singular pattern. We saw several capsized ap- 
parently by accident along the road, and others that were 



308 LAYBACH. 

capsized purposely, to unload the products of the farm. The 
farms and buildings, like those in all wild mountain regions, 
have a sort of wild and semi-civilized look, but still an ap- 
pearance of thrift and comfort, such as come only from 
honest and prosperous industry and general contentment. 

The first town of any importance on our route was Lay- 
bach — Laibach — Laubach, the JEmona of the Romans. At 
Laybach we left the diligence and took to cars. We had 
only time to glance over the little city, which has nothing 
striking except the fine old castle on a hill, in the middle of 
the town, and looking proudly down upon every part of it. 
Indeed, the town consists of only about fourteen thousand 
people, who are clustered around the base of the Castle Hill. 
It is on the river Laybach, a rapid stream that, when swol- 
len by its tributaries from the mountains which rise imme- 
diately from the town, has covered the plain to a great ex- 
tent, with a bed of barren gravel. 

Circumstances have given to Laybach a nominal immortali- 
ty. Sir Humphrey Davy, so deservedly eminent in Scienti- 
fic Literature, in his repeated journeys to these regions of 
mountain purity in search of health, often made this his 
resting-place and point of departure, on his little excursions 
for his favorite sports of shooting and fishing and scientific 
inquiry — and on one occasion he was detained here several 
months by sickness. Here he finished " The Last of the 
O'Donahoes," and the second edition of " Salmonia," on 
his last excursion to these his favorite resorts, only a few 
months before he died. 

_The great sights of Carniola are seen by short trips from 
Laybach, which is the capital of the Province. The quick- 
silver mines of Idria would have been interesting to me, but 
I did not to go there. The Lake of Zirknitz — ancient Lu- 
geus — containing some ten or twelve square miles, with vil- 
lages, churches and castles on its shores, is remarkable only 



SIGHTS OF THIS REGIOX. 309 

for the fact, that at irregular intervals, sometimes once a 
year, and sometimes once in five years, the lake springs a 
leak and runs entirely dry, leaving its bottom to be cultiva- 
ted long enough for some short crops to mature, and the 
people sometimes catch fish one year and cut buckwheat the 
next in the same spot. It takes three to four weeks for the 
water to run out, and often as long for it to return — but 
sometimes, after long and copious rains, the water rushes in 
from below and fills the lake in a day. The mountains are 
all of cavernous limestone, and these sudden fillings doubt- 
less arise from the overflowing of some higher mountain lake 
communicating with this by an immense subterranean syphon. 
The grotto of Kleinhausel which has been explored for three 
miles, and out of which a river issues, is another of the local 
curiosities, and the great grotto of Adelsburg, of world-wide 
fame, and the grotto of Magdalen, with its sluggish rivers 
and blind amphibious lizards — Proteus Anguinus — are also 
close by, but I had no time to devote to any of these sub- 
terranean lions. They are all full of dangers. The time 
has been when I was bold for such excursions, but later 
years have made me wiser and more timid. I have men- 
tioned my narrow escape at Tivoli — I can recall others. The 
travelling companion of Sir Humphrey in the grotto of Cor- 
neale, near Trieste, after he had descended along by nar- 
row, slippery paths and rotten stairs or rather ladders to the 
farthest explorations, returned to make some sketches and 
incautiously rested upon a wooden hand-rail placed there for 
protection, which gave way and he fell backward from rock 
to rock, twice heels over head, and landed with his head 
downward and his feet in the air, on the verge of a smooth 
rock, beneath which was a dark impenetrable abyss, into 
which his next fall must have plunged him. It was some 
minutes before he could be extricated, and when he was re- 
stored to the upper air, the ghastly paleness of his guides 



310 CONGRESS AT LAYBACH. 

told almost as plainly as their fearful shriek when they saw 
him go, of the dreadful danger of his fall. I now avoid all 
such places. 

Laybach has an historical or diplomatic interest from the 
congress of the allied sovereigns held here 1820 -'21, and 
which proclaimed as incorporated into the public law of 
Continental Europe the right of intervention in the affairs 
of other nations. Russia, Austria and Prussia united in it, 
but England refused to acquiesce. It was during this con- 
gress that the Emperor of Austria, in addressing the profes- 
sors of a college at Laybach, directed them to be careful not 
to teach their pupils too much — he did not want, he said, 
learned or scientific men, but obedient subjects. It was this 
congress and those which were so frequent during the time 
of the Holy Alliance, which gave occasion to Beranger's sa- 
tire on the death of Christophe, the bloody negro tyrant of 
Hay ti. The poem is called the ' i Death of King Chris- 
tophe — or a note presented by the nobility of Hayti to the 
three great Allies, December, 1820." The sting of the sa- 
tire is in the refrain — 

" Vite un Congres ! 
Princes vengez ce bon Christophe, 
Koi digne de tous V03 regrets." 

and in this couplet of the last stanza — 

•* Ce nionarque etait votre frcre 
Les rois sout de meme couleur. " 

" Quick call a Congress ! 
Princes avenge this good Christophe, 
A King so worthy of your tears — 

^ * » * * « 

A King, your brother, we extol, 
Of the same color are ye all." 

At Laybach we took our places for our first experience 
in a German railroad car. They gave us instead of a ticket 



VALLEY OF THE LAYBACH. 311 

a long receipt for our fare, with ten paragraphs of notifica- 
tions and travelling directions in three languages, German, 
French, and Italian, in parallel columns. Baggage was by 
weight, and weighing it and getting our tickets was a long 
process^ exceedingly tedious to our American habits. We 
took our seats in a long omnibus car, like those of our own 
railroads, and were trundled along only at the comfortable 
rate of some twelve or fifteen miles an hour, giving us a 
fine opportunity for such observations as the cars permitted. 

We had hardly time to read through our long and instruc- 
tive ticket, and to be specially pleased with the by-law that 
" it is not permitted to smoke in the cars except in pipes 
well closed, and under the express condition that all the pas- 
sengers consent to it," before we discovered that, apparently 
as a matter of course, most of the passengers had taken out 
their pipes and were filling them for a social smoke, and in 
good time the car was so full of smoke that we could hard- 
ly breathe. We concluded that the prohibition was only 
intended for the benefit of the smokers themselves, and was to 
be interpreted to mean that all should smoke. So we did 
not object to the smoke that strangled us, any more than to 
the gutturals which made our jaws ache from sympathy. 

The ride was, however, a delightful one, through con- 
stantly changing, and always interesting landscapes — on one 
hand rose lofty precipices of rock, whose bases were washed 
by the Laybach, and on the other, velvet lawns of wonder- 
ful greenness and freshness . and smoothness and beauty. 
Now the road and the river, compressed into the narrowest 
space, find their way together through notches between lofty 
and sharp peaks, towering into cones, and rent by fissures 
and chasms — and now, between us and those peaks, intervene 
lower ranges of hills, cultivated to the top, with now and 
then a ruined castle, and dotted by peasant houses here and 
there, while the villages are on the intervale below. On the 



312 STORM CTLT.Y. 

tops of those hills, as far as we could see, away from any 
villages, a little church would here and there point its spire 
to heaven — a novelty which called to our mind the worship- 
ping in the high places of old, and suggested the possibility 
of their being placed there that altars and temples might be- 
less liable to attack, and more easily defended in troublesome 
times, when the Protestants were hunted like wild beasts 
through the mountains of Styria. Women at work in the 
fields with men has ceased to be a novelty with us, but here 
for the first time we saw women mowing and reaping, and 
it seemed still very odd to see women, young and old, at- 
tacking in fair earnest broad fields of grass and grain, with 
the scythe and the sickle. 

In the midst of these scenes a terrible storm of wind and 
rain — a perfect tempest — swept over us, and — many as I 
have seen of them at home — it seemed to me as novel as it 
was sublime. Its mighty columns of water seemed higher and 
bolder, and more life-like, as they stalked like giants across 
the plain, and seemed to stride along the mountain-sides, 
dashing across the chasms and leaping from peak to peak, 
swaying and turning and wheeling in the gusts of the hurri- 
cane, which made everything bow in apparent homage as it 
passed. 

At Cilly — Claudia Cilleia of the Emperor Claudius — we 
strike the Saar. The mountains now open broadly, and the 
plain spreads out into a cultivated vale in the midst of a 
rolling country, and at Mahrburgh, on the Drave, this plain 
becomes immense and of great beauty. Thorough cultiva- 
tion, good husbandry, and unostentatious living and man- 
ners, have here their usual accompaniments of thrift, pros- 
perity and comfort. There were no beggars visible, and I 
did not see a person that looked poverty-stricken and in 
want. Nor did I see any priests or monks, so far as I 
knew. This was not, however, because the people were not 



GRATZ. - 313 

religious. If we could judge by the crucifixes, the people 
were very devout — we often saw, by the wayside, and in the 
fields, crucifixes as large as life. 

Gratz — Graiacum — is the capital of Styria, and is a beau- 
tiful city of some fifty thousand people, situated on the 
Mur. It has a university and is the seat of a bishop. The 
Emperor, Frederick II., was born and buried here. It is 
the place of meeting of the Styrian Parliament — has its 
nobility and gentry — its officials and men of letters. Von 
Hammer, the Orientalist, was born here. Its libraries and 
museums, and gardens and theatres, and beautiful prome- 
nades, are exceedingly agreeable, and living is cheap. It is 
the starting point, also, for many interesting excursions. 
All these attractions make it a place of considerable resort, 
and a halting place for travellers of leisure. I had, how- 
ever, only time to give it a hurried glance, in the brief half 
hour allowed by the stop of the trains. 

From Gratz we were whirled along the valleys of the 
Murz and the Mur, through scenery of the same varied 
and beautiful character, passing several small towns, 
and the larger ones of Bruck and Kapfenberg, each of 
which, according to the guide-book, has some story of in- 
terest, connected, perhaps, with the frequent old castles, and 
here and there a modern chateau, which were the principal 
objects that attracted our attention. Early in the evening 
we arrived at Murzzuschlag. When the cars stopped, we 
kept our seats, determining not to go out, with what we sup- 
posed was a hurried rush for refreshments. One of the 
passengers, however, seeing we were strangers, informed us, 
in French, that we were to find our way into an omnibus — 
and then we first learned that the railroad was not com- 
pleted over the mountains, and that we were to go over the 
Sommering pass in omnibuses — a slow, dragging journey of 
four or five hours, in the night time. The delay on our 

14 



314 CROSSING THE SOMMERING PASS. 

part was very fortunate for us, for had we been among the 
first out, the road-agent would, doubtless, have innocently 
thrust us into a crowded omnibus with the only other woman, 
apparently a lady, in the company, but who was really an 
impudent, brazen-faced courtesan, on her way from Grata 
to the wider scope of Vienna. She cast her beauties all 
abroad, and, by her allurements, had at the same time re- 
vealed her character and fired up the blood of the fierce 
Goths and Scandinavians, who were our fellow passengers, 
and who elbowed their way to get in the same carriage with 
her. Our tardiness saved us from that painful and perilous 
companionship, and fortunately put us into the coupe of a 
diligence which was, I believe, the last conveyance filled. 
We were comfortably seated, but M. was nervous, and 
alarmed — she had been uneasy ever since she had discovered 
that the only other woman in the car was such a creature, 
and the transfer to the carriage was so unexpected that she 
could not quiet her nerves. The darkness would have been 
total, but for the feeble lights which each carriage bore, and 
which revealed to us nothing but the desolate wilderness of 
that mountain pass. When Ave arrived at the summit, we 
stopped, and I went into the tavern there, to get, if possible, 
a piece of bx*ead for M., and 1here I found seated around a 
dimly-lighted room, a few of the wildest and roughest 
looking boors that I had ever seen in picture or reality, and 
they glared at me with a wild and sullen stare, which really 
made me inwardly shudder. However, I got a drink of 
water, and a piece of black bread for M., and in the coupe 
again we hurried more rapidly and roughly down the wind- 
ing roads of the mountain side to Gloggnitz. Every circum- 
stance conspired to make that a night long to be remem- 
bered. 



VIENNA. 

"TTTE looked with interest for our first sight of Vienna, 
VV Vindobena, the capital of the great Austrian Em- 
pire—a proud and powerful nation, ripe with the growth of 
many centuries, with a worthy imperial capital. I am 
compelled to say that I had no knowledge of what Vienna 
was like — I was indeed surprised on turning my thoughts to 
it, at my ignorance of everything connected with it. When, 
therefore, I entered this noble and beautiful city, I looked 
with avidity and earnestness heightened by the novelty 
and feeling of surprise at the unexpected pleasure. Its 
lofty and ornamental architecture — its streets so finely 
paved with a flat surfaced stone, and clean as a floor — the 
neatness and thrift of the busy people — the absence of beg- 
gars — the few priests, enough for the spiritual care of the 
people, but not enough to excite injurious remarks or un- 
worthy epithets — the many soldiers, in time of war perhaps 
too suggestive of villanous saltpetre to be agreeable, but in 
time of peace certainly ornamental — its public grounds o ( 



316 GLACIS AND SUBURBS. 

such great extent, with drives for carriages and walks for 
pedestrians, groves for shade, and flowers for fragrance and 
show, all united to make our first impressions of this great 
capital exceedingly agreeable, and they were heightened by 
the longer and closer, but still rapid observation which our 
haste permitted. 

The city proper is small in dimensions, and is like an 
island in the midst of its suburbs, which are as thickly peo- 
pled as the city itself. The city is separated from the sub- 
urbs by a glacis or open space a thousand to fifteen hundred 
feet wide, which once constituted a part of the fortifications 
of the city, but is now planted with trees and laid out into 
walks, and drives, and pleasant places. It is a sort of park, 
embracing the city within it like a belt, except a small space 
on the northeast, where the city is separated from the 
suburbs by only the narrow and sluggish little branch of the 
Danube, which resembles, and is sometimes called a canal 
and which gave its own name, Vien, to the city. On the 
city side of this glacis, is the wall of the city with its bas- 
tions, which is a little more than two miles in circuit. It is 
now used only as a public promenade, and looking down, as 
it does, on the old city on one side, and the glacis on the 
other, and out upon the suburbs all around it, it is a most 
popular walk — I should think it must be the most striking 
public walk in Europe. "We are struck everywhere with 
this converting of the fort and the battery into the quiet and 
peaceable luxuries of social life, even in those great centres 
where the political heart of arbitray power has, till more 
Recently, always felt the necessity of being protected by the 
iron ribs and rocky defences of war. Slowly as peace dis- 
mantles the breastworks of war, if the thousand years of 
the millenium are to be measured as geologists measure the 
six days of the creation, the happy period may be already 
begun, at the end of which all swords shall be beat into 
ploughshares, and men shall learn war no more. 



THE PRATER. 317 

Within the city, are the Royal Palace and the residences 
of the high nobility and officers of State, the museums, gal- 
leries, public places, and churches of most distinction. It is 
old, aristocratic, respectable, and often magnificent. It 
contains, however, only about one twelfth of the inhabitants, 
while the other eleven twelfths occupy the thirty-four 
suburbs. The houses that front upon the glacis on the 
suburban side, are among the best in the city — and here are 
to be found the new man, the self-made man, the rich man, 
with the ostentation of the parvenu. There are twelve 
hundred houses in the city, and thirteen thousand in the 
suburbs — the numbers run from one to twelve hundred and 
odd — each of the thirty-four suburbs being separately num- 
bered. Outside of the suburbs is another wall surrounding 
the whole five hundred thousand people of what, in com- 
mon parlance, is the city of Vienna. This gives, you 
perceive, about an average of thirty-five persons to each 
house — some houses are said to contain many hundred 
tenants. 

Outside of the city — on the east — is the famous Prater, or 
common, for drives or walks and amusements, and for the 
great gatherings — omnium gatherum — of great holidays. It is 
of immense extent — say fifteen or twenty miles in circumfer- 
ence — and on public occasions all Vienna is there, in that 
free and easy, miscellaneous and democratic freedom and 
equality, which I supposed existed nowhere except with us- 
All ranks, conditions, and classes of people — from king to 
cobbler, from peasant to peer, seem to be entered for a grand 
miscellaneous race of enjoyment. In those portions of the 
Prater more especially resorted to by the common people, 
booths, and tents, and shanties, and fires, and temporary 
lktle kitchens for cooking, abound, and sports, and plays, and 
fun, and frolic with old and young, make the scene one of 
great liveliness and novelty to a stranger — and to the native 



318 HOLIDAYS LIBRARIES. 

looker-on, who understands the languages, and usages, and 
characteristics of the people, it cannot fail to be infinitely 
amusing. When Joseph II. was requested by the select 
classes to allow none but their equals to mingle with them in 
the Prater, he replied — " If I would only live with my equals 
I must go to the tomb of the Emperors at the Capuchin 
Church, and there spend my days." 

The many holidays and places of public recreation and 
amusement, which are provided for the people in the aristo- 
cratic countries of Europe, though perhaps too numerous, 
are still very suggestive to every reflective mind of a great 
want of our nature — diversion and relaxation. How it rec- 
onciles people to their lot. What a friend to law and 
order is good nature and social pleasure. Where, as with 
us, there is no sovereign but ourselves — no government to 
bear heavily upon us — no chains to rattle on our hands — 
no baubles of nobility, so instinctively desired by man where- 
ever we find him — these amusements and recreations should be 
encouraged perhaps more than they are, to break up the 
sordid routine of competition and cupidity — to smooth the 
knotted brow of care — to lengthen life and plant its way- 
side with flowers. 

A little guidebook for the city and its environs shows that 
Vienna is rich in libraries. The Imperial Library contains 
more than three hundred thousand volumes — that of the 
University, one hundred and six thousand — Military Arch- 
ives, near thirty thousand — Oriental, about twenty thousand 
— Medical, six thousand — the private library of his Majesty, 
fifty thousand — of the archduke Charles, twenty thousand — 
Prince Esterhazy, thirty-six thousand — Liechtenstein, fifty 
thousand — Schwartzenberg, forty thousand, &c, &c. — M. 
Castelli has ten thousand dramatic works, theatre bills for 
two hundred and fifty years, and seven hundred portraits of 
dramatic persons. Its Museums of Antiquities, of Art and 



PAINTINGS. 319 

of Nature, arc large and interesting. One is greatly sur- 
prised at the collections of Art. The Royal Gallery has 
two thousand five hundred paintings — Academy of Fine 
Arts, eight hundred. Prince Liechtenstein, one thousand 
two hundred — Esterhazy, eight hundred — Count Czernin de 
Chudenitz, four hundred. In engravings, Vienna is not sur- 
passed in Europe. The collection founded by Prince Eu- 
gene, and noAV attached to the Imperial Library, contains 
one hundred and seventy-five thousand engravings, besides 
seven hundred and fifly volumes of engravings — a collection 
left by Francis I. contains ninety-two thousand portraits — 
twenty-two thousand sheets collected by Lavater, while de- 
voting himself to the study of physiognomy, are in this col- 
lection — the Archduke Charles has a collection of fifteen 
thousand — Prince Esterhazy, fifty thousand, and two thou- 
sand designs. The musical collections of books and pieces 
are exceedingly rich. There is no charge for visiting the 
collections of Vienna. The public monuments, fountains, 
&c, by Launer, Marches!, Raphael, Donner, Schwanthaler, 
Fischer and Canova, are perpetual open-air, free exhibitions 
of the finest sculptures. The churches, too, are, some of 
them, noble works of art in themselves, and rich in altar- 
pieces and monumental statuary. 

In the church of the Augustines is Canova's masterpiece 
of monumental composition- — the tomb of the Archduchess 
Christina, of Saxe Teschen, the favorite daughter of Maria 
Theresa. It is the same idea as the monument to Canova, 
in the Church of the Frati at Venice, which I mentioned in 
a letter from that city. The design of Canova — his great 
genius, is here. The original design is said to have been in- 
tended by the great sculptor for Titian. How eminently fit 
— what a laudable and modest monumental self-glorification 
it was for Canova to tax his wonderful powers in a monu- 
ment for Titian — a monument of his own genius in honor of 



320 CANOVA AND TITIAN. 

Titian's glory. But failing — I do not know why — to devote 
it to Titian, and having first applied it for the Archduchess, 
it was exceedingly appropriate that, after his own death it 
should he produced in the hest style then possihle, for his 
own monument, in the same church where he had designed 
to place it for Titian. It is now there, and none the less a 
monument to Titian by Canova, although in the same church 
is another monument to Titian, and this is called a monu- 
ment to Canova. 

So here, in Vienna, it is really another monument to Ti- 
tian and to Canova, for the memory can never be lost that 
the design was for Titian by Canova, and when the Arch- 
duchess shall have passed away from memory, except as she 
shall be preserved by this monument — when a heap of 
dust alone remains of her, a blaze of glory will shine around 
the memory of Canova and Titian, and their names 
will be as fresh as to-day. Much as I was struck with the 
monument in Venice, the impression here was much more 
striking. The composition is substantially reproduced in the 
Venetian copy, and if that were the only copy, it would de- 
serve all the admiration which it receives — but seeing this, 
I seemed to look upon the living scene, of which that was 
but the cold and stony counterfeit presentment. Perhaps it 
was because it was the second look — perhaps, to some ex- 
tent, the surroundings may have influenced me, — but never, 
before or since, have I so felt the power of genius over life- 
less mai'ble. ' Here the pyramid is of grayish marble, against 
which the white statues are mildly relieved, and take a 
sharper outline. The pyramid is approached by two steps 
from a long and massive base. The door of the sepulchral 
vault opens in the centre of the pyramid, and toward it groups 
of mourners are ascending. How slowly they seem to move, 
and how sorrowful and solemn they seem to be. They can't be 
stone ! Virtue leads the procession, carrying the urn and 



TOMB OP THE ARCHDUCHESS. 321 

the ashes of the departed, and by her side two little girls 
bear torches to light up the darkness of the grave. Benev- 
olence supports old age, feeble, tottering, and down-strick- 
en with affliction, and by his side childhood folds its little 
hands, and hangs its head in childish sorrow. An imperial 
lion, couching, subdued and sorrowful, is there, and beside 
him the genius of despondency. Over the door, in a medal- 
lion in low relief, is the Archduchess upheld by happiness, 
while a genius presents to her the palm of heavenly triumph. 
All these figures are as large as life, and I may say even 
more truthful to the scene than life itself. The truth and 
feeling of the whole composition are beyond description, and 
they grow upon you till its mute eloquence overpowers you, 
while if you abstract yourself from the scene, and study it 
in detail, each particular statue proves to be a work of art 
worthy of the chisel of Canova in his best days. 

In one of the chapels of the church of the Augustines, are 
the tombs of the Emperor Leopold II., the Austrian Gener- 
al Daun, and of Dr. Von Swieten, physician to Maria The- 
resa, and the great educational reformer of Austria. To 
him, under the protection and encouragement of his royal 
patient and sovereign, the nation is indebted for the present 
system of universal public education. Well might she build 
him a tomb among those whom she most delighted to honor. 
So, too, among the tombs of the imperial dead in their vault 
in the chapel of the Capuchins, with the coffins of Maria 
Theresa herself and her son Joseph II. — the two monarchs 
who have done most for Austria — are found the mortal re- 
mains of the governess and instructress of that great Em- 
press — placed there by her imperial pupil, who in gratitude 
for her instructions, thus gave her royal burial. 

No country could have more patriotic or devoted sover- 
eigns than were Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II. Her 
firmness amounted almost to obstinacy, and well nigh ruin- 
14* 



322 MARIA THERESA. 

ed her Empire in her wars with the European Powers — but 
it also secured to her people the reforms which she intro- 
duced, from which she could not be driven. It gave the 
hardness of bigotry to her religious zeal and enthusiasm and 
persistence to her constant war with abuses in church and 
state, and it gave great and commanding influence to her 
solid common sense and practical tact. The familiar account 
of the mode in which she rallied the dissatisfied and alienat- 
ed Hungarian nobility when her cause was almost desperate 
— her dominions reduced — her allies withdrawn — her troops 
unpaid — her minister disheartened and her treasury empty — 
furnishes a good illustration of her courage, her greatness 
and address. In 1741, on the Mont Royal in Presburg, after 
the custom of Hungary, on horseback, she had drawn the 
sword of St. Stephen, and, turning its naked blade toward 
the four quarters of the earth, had called the universe to wit- 
ness that she would defend her people against the world, 
and it was a Diet at Presburg that she determined to retrieve 
her fortunes. Dressed in royal mourning, in the costume of 
the country, the crown of St. Stephen on her head, the 
same sword at her side, and bearing in her arms her infant 
son, Duke Joseph, not a vear old, wearing 

" Upon hla baby brow the round 
And lop of sovereignly — " 

she walked into the Diet with that quiet majesty which 
so exalted her beauty, and in the living Latin of the country 
told her desolate condition — said she had nothing left to 
rely upon but her brave Hungarians, and committed herself 
and child to them. Instantly every sword flashed from its 
scabbard, and on their naked blades they swore " Moriamur 
pro Maria Theresa" — " We will die for Maria Theresa." 
They furnished troops — they fought like demons — and the 
armies of her enemies were overwhelmed by them. She 



Joseph ii. 823 

reigned forty years — in those days a period of nearly two 
generations — and her policy grew to maturity. She was 
succeeded by Joseph II., more enlightened and liberal than 
she, and quite ready to start from her vantage ground on 
even a more patriotic course — but he lacked the iron nerve 
of his mother, and in his last years, retreated fatally from 
his lofty eminence, and revoked some of his most patriotic 
decrees. But he was a great man, and a good one. He 
said to the historian of the empire — " Spare no one, not 
even myself, if you come down to me with your history. 
Let posterity judge of my faults, and those of my predeces- 
sors." Frederick the Great said of him — "Joseph is an 
Emperor such as Germany has not had for a long time. 
Educated in splendor — his habits are simple — grown up 
amidst flattery, he is still modest — inflamed with the love of 
glory, he yet sacrifices his ambition to do his duty." He 
travelled through his dominions with no more ostentation 
than a private man — indeed, in the assumed character of a 
count, he visited the great Frederic in his camp, who the 
next year returned the visit, and those two matter-of-fact 
men threw aside regal ceremony, and courtly forms, and in 
the unrestrained freedom of familiar and friendly inter- 
course, formed a better opinion of each other's character. 
In like manner, he exchanged visits with the Pope — and he 
spent six weeks in Paris. Everywhere, at home and abroad, 
he was admired, and his people adored him. Many of the 
nobility, however, and the priests generally, were unfriendly 
to him, because of his reforms, which often were directed 
against some of their too exclusive privileges, and almost 
always looked to the elevation of the people, and the promo- 
tion of their welfare and happiness. 

In the matter of public education, Austria holds a pre- 
eminent rank. She has, excluding Hungary, nine prosper- 
ous universities, having an aggregate of about fourteen 



324 PUBLIC EDUCATION. 

thousand students, eight thousand of whom are in the two 
universities of Prague and Vienna. Besides universities, 
there are numerous lyceums and other higher* seminaries, 
normal schools in all the principal towns, and about thirty 
thousand common schools with forty thousand teachers and 
about two millions five hundred thousand pupils. The Aus- 
trian system of public education is thoroughly organized 
and developed under the regulations of the government. 
The schools are gratuitously open to all, and a system of 
indirect compulsion has a most salutary effect in securing 
the attendance of the children. No one is permitted to 
exercise a trade, to be employed as a workman, to hold 
office or enter the army or even to be married, without a cer- 
tificate of having attended school, and of a certain amount 
of educational improvement — a large employer, in one of 
the provinces, was fined for employing a workman who had 
not the proper certificate of education. Nor is the system, 
except in its latest improvements, new. It is the growth of 
nearly one hundred years. The system of Normal schools, 
for the supply of teachers, without which no system of 
common schools can prosper, was introduced by Maria 
Theresa in 1771, and the generous encouragement of edu- 
cation has been a favorite policy of the enlightened mon- 
archs who have succeeded her, till public education has 
given, and will hereafter, in an increased degree, give to the 
Austrian empire productive industry, strength, and influ- 
ence, far beyond what she could ever have attained without 
it — a hundred fold above its cost. 

We sometimes hear of the despotic bigotry of Austria. 
As a nation she is intensely Eoman Catholic — her sovereigns 
have always been among the most devoted and faithful sons 
of that church, and perhaps we Protestants are. too willing 
to believe and apt to exaggerate, causes of complaint against 
Roman Catholics, and as Republicans too ready to look upon 



RELIGION IN THE SCHOOLS. 325 

despotic power as necessarily all evil. But one cannot 
travel through her great dominions without seeing, every- 
where, the evidences of an enlightened government, securing 
the happiness and prosperity of the people — which is the 
true end of government. I have now travelled seven hun- 
dred miles under the protection of her black eagle, subject 
to her strongest police, and under her rigid passport system, 
without an annoyance — seeing everywhere prosperity, and 
contentment, and attachment, to their institutions — every- 
where religious toleration. Of course there is no religious 
equality, for that is quite impossible with an established 
religion — but Protestant places of worship are open and 
fully protected. There is a Protestant Theological Seminary 
in Vienna, of some fifty students. There is a Normal School 
for Jewish teachers in Prague, supported by the govern- 
ment. The religion of every child is respected in the public 
schools, and he receives in the school, or in connection with 
the school, religious instruction from teachers of his own 
faith, while in secular studies the Catholic and Protestant 
are educated together. Under an absolute government, and 
the system of indirect compulsion to which I have alluded, 
this is managed without difficulty. And with religion and 
learning, taught systematically and thoroughly in the com- 
mon schools, by religious and secular teachers, appointed 
and supported by the government, and under its supervision 
and control, through its public officers, who can fail to see 
that the people will grow up, generation after generation, 
thoroughly grounded in the existing state of things, and in 
obedience and in attachment to the government. What a 
lofty, reliant, and human policy it is, thus to strengthen a 
government by a people universally intelligent, religious and 
industrious, knit together by an attachment to the throne, 
inculcated as school instruction, from infancy to manhood. 
What shall Ave say, then, of ourselves 1 ? If universal 



326 SOCIAL MORALS. 

public education can fortify and make acceptable to people, 
the systems of arbitrary power in church and state, which 
exist in Europe, what then can it not do for us 1 And how, 
with one accord, every State of the American Union should 
fortify itself with systems of public schools, against which 
the enemies of Freedom can never prevail ! 

Austria is tasting now but the first fruits of her educational 
policy. One hundred years ago, Maria Theresa began the 
great educational reform in her dominions, by a thorough 
revolution in the University of Vienna — and when, a few 
years later, in the Convent School of St. Stephen's, was 
begun the imperfect and experimental Normal School for 
improving and multiplying the class of teachers, even the 
hopeful Empress could hardly have foreseen half the results 
which the century has produced, much less those which the 
lapse of three generations more shall produce. Those who 
labor for the reform of national habits and customs, always 
seem to hope against hope, for although the force of habit, 
as a positive and active force, is entirely overlooked and ig- 
nored in the plausible fallacies of political economy, it is 
still altogether the most powerful resistance ever encountered 
in measures of national improvement and reform — and hence 
such measures at first move slowly, and it is not until, by 
the lapse of generations, the force of old habits is overcome, 
that the hopes of progress are fully realized. Another 
hundred years and what will not the Austrian Empire 
become by the mere force of education operating directly upon 
the people, and indirectly upon the government ! I am not 
ignorant that Austria is a despotism in church and state, 
nor that the state of morals among her people is in many 
respects deplorable, in some almost hopeless. Sexual licen- 
tiousness, the most degrading of popular vices, the most 
pernicious in its effects upon society, and the most difficult 
to arrest, is a bold, widespread, and dreadful evil among the 



SUNDAY. 327 

Austrian people. About half the children born in Austria — 
in Vienna, and some of the other large cities, more than 
half — are born out of wedlock. Difficult and slow of cure 
such an evil always is, and much more so where a standing 
army of soldiers in the state, and of monks and priests in 
the church, are compelled to celibacy, and the confessional 
and priestly absolution, and foundling hospitals, and lying-in 
asylums, with arrangements of the most pernicious secrecy, 
are in existence, still, I cannot help thinking, that education 
will help to cure it. The same government that so wisely 
seeks to introduce universal education to strengthen its hold 
upon the attachment of the people, will one day see that 
interest and duty unite in teaching, theoretically and practi- 
cally, that the strongest bonds of union and strength in a 
nation are the lawful ties of family and kindred, the sacred 
unity of the domestic circle, and the protected and favored 
" Sacred lowe of weel-placed love " and its legitimate and 
enduring mutuality. When the Austrian monarchs shall 
feel this conviction then reform may be certain and rapid. 

We spent a Sunday at Vienna and were very agreeably 
surprised to see business suspended — the shops closed and 
the day made a day of quiet and rest apparently — probably 
more a day of relaxation than of religious abstaining from 
labor. Though business was still and the noise of traffic 
hushed, the good wives, sitting in their doors and vesti- 
bules, were knitting with great industry. 

We attended High Mass at the Cathedral — St. Stephen's 
— a cardinal officiating. The church was by no means 
crowded, and the ceremonies were such as are usual on such 
occasions — diversified only by the greater richness of the 
vestments and the more stately pomp of the ceremony. We 
lingered to take a better view of the interior of the church, 
and were well repaid. Notwithstanding our recent look at 
the churches of Rome, and Florence, and Venice, this ex-* 



328 THE CATHEDRAL. 

cited our admiration in the highest degree, as one of the 
most mngnificent specimens of the richest Gothic — worthy in 
its architecture and in all its appointments to be the cathe- 
dral church of so proud and so wealthy a city — the capital 
and residence of so faithful sons of the Roman Catholic 
Church as the haughty and absolute Hapsburgs. It is five 
hundred to seven hundred years old, is three hundred and 
fifty feet long and two hundred and twenty feet wide. Its 
tower is an object of wonderful beauty, rising four hundred 
and sixty-five feet, regularly tapering from its base to its 
top, and all the way on all sides wrought with the most 
beautiful style of Gothic ornamentation. Within the church 
a dim religious light reveals a corresponding richness in 
precious stones and burnished silver which is exceedingly 
imposing. It contains some ostentatious monuments of 
royal and noble personages. That of Frederic III. has 
sculptured upon it two hundred and forty figures and forty 
coats-of-arms and a motto, " To Austria belongs the empire 
of the world." 

In that beautiful tower is a look-out which commands the 
surrounding approaches to the city for a great distance. 
Here the brave Governor Stahremberg placed himself to re- 
connoitre the Turkish besiegers, in the last great siege of the 
Turks, under Cara Mustapha, made two hundred years ago 
— and here, on the sixtieth day of the siege, he saw in the 
distance, the waving banners of Christian Poland coming to 
his relief, while all Europe besides, looked tamely on, and 
not a sabre was drawn, as on the spires of a famished 
Christian capital the Crescent was apparently to take the 
place of the Cross. Sobieski halted his legions for a brief 
repose, and from the heights looked down upon the parallels 
and strategy of the Turk with a smile, and exclaimed — 
" We shall beat him — oh, how we shall beat him !" 

The 14th of July, two hundred thousand Turks — in 



MARIAZErX. 329 

the form of a crescent — had taken a position about the city, 
and Mustapba had issued his proclamation of peace and pro- 
tection to those who would submit — "but in case you re- 
sist," said he, "and oblige us to take the city by force, we shall 
spare no one — and furthermore, we swear, by the Creator 
of heaven and earth, we will put all to the sword — we will 
take your property, and we will carry into captivity your 
wives and children!" 

The city, with only thirteen thousand defenders, held out 
against hope. On the 12th of September, Sobieski, with 
sixty-nine thousand half-naked Poles, swept down upon the 
gorgeous camp and the magnificent columns of the two hun- 
dred thousand turbaned Turks, and at half- past seven in the 
evening, they were scattered and flying, and he was at ease 
in the tent of Mustapba, and master of his million of trea- 
sure. The principal bell of St. Stephen's — which weighs three 
hundred and fifty-seven hundred-weight — was cast from one 
hundred and eighty cannon taken from the Turks. 

The bodies of the imperial family are buried in the Ca- 
puchin Church, their hearts in the Church of the Augustines, 
and their bowels in the Cathedral — St. Stephen's. What a 
strange custom ! Maria Theresa went every Friday for 
thirteen years, to weep beside the consecrated and heartless 
remains of her dead husband in the vault of the Capuchin 
Church, instead of by the urn containing his heart in the 
Church of the Augustines. 

I could not wait to see the great pilgrimage to Mariazell, 
which would move on its way in less than a week, and 
which I should have been glad to see, as one of the charac- 
teristics of the Christian civilization and intelligence of Eu- 
rope. But what is Mariazell and its pilgrimage ? I gave 
you some account of the holy house of Loretto, its image of 
the Virgin sculptured by St. Luke, its crowds of worshippers, 
and its costly gifts — and of the Madonna de San Luca, and 



330 PILGRIMS TO MARIAZELL. 

its dingy portrait of the same queen of the Catholic heaven, 
painted by the same versatile apostle, approached through a 
portico three miles long at Bologna. Mariazell is a similar 
object of adoration in the heart of Austria. Away down 
among the mountains of Styria, in the sharp and angular 
fastnesses of the Styrian Alps, some seven hundred years 
ago, tradition says, a solitary and devoted priest built him- 
self a cell, where he might minister his sacred offices to the 
rude mountaineers and ignorant peasants of the valleys of 
that wild region. He found in the fields a little image of 
the Virgin with her Divine infant, carved in wood, all as 
black as ebony. Consecrated according to the rites of his 
religion and very sacred and holy, he placed it in his cell for 
his own devotion and those of his more ignorant parishion- 
ers. In process of time it wrought miracles upon those who 
came there to worship — and rapidly the fame of Mariazell — 
Mary-in-the-cell — was spread throughout Germany, and all 
classes of the faithful thronged to her rustic temple — and 
noble and royal persons vied with each other in the honors 
Ihey paid to it, till now the finest church in all Styria em- 
braces within its walls, beneath its sacred arches, the little 
stone chapel which royal gratitude, for a miraclous cure, and 
royal devotion, built over the original cell. It is still the scene 
of many a miracle — and votive gifts and offerings of immense 
value from imperial, royal, and noble personages, and others, 
have been poured out in rich profusion at the shrine of the 
"Black Virgin, "and still load its treasury. A place and im- 
age so sacred have been the resort of multitudes of pilgrims all 
along for hundreds of years. Now, between May and Sep- 
tember annually, some seventy-live to a hundred different com- 
panies of pilgrims, amounting, some years, it is said, to one 
hundred thousand, resort to Mariazell from various parts of 
Austria. There are only a few houses — some nine hundred 
inhabitants, in a, wild and dreary wildnerness. I did not 



ADORING THE IMAGE. 331 

get any very distinct idea of the order of the pilgrimages. 
It is somehow regulated by the government, so that all may 
not go at once. These pilgrims in their turn climb up the 
rock and enter the church in pairs, male and female together, 
and on their knees, upon the floor shuffle along " with the 
sun" around the little old chapel which contains the sacred 
image, Mary-in -the- cell. 

As it is quite impossible for one tenth of them to find 
anything like even sleeping accommodations with the inhab- 
itants of the village, they herd together — both sexes — in the 
neighboring woods, and make the night vocal with their mis- 
cellaneous songs and revelry, not always religious nor 
always bacchanalian, but always noisy and joyful in their 
Gothic harmonies, notwithstanding their privations. Those 
who have been there speak of the beauty of the evening 
scene. At the sound of the vesper bell, there is perfect 
silence — each one uncovers his head and says the appointed 
prayer, then suddenly from the midst of this silence rings out 
the wild and harmonious chant of all the pilgrims, which 
sometimes breaks up into responsive singing — one company 
responding to another like sublime reverberating echoes, in 
those primitive scenes. 

Years ago — when the two great pilgrimages from Gratz and 
Vienna usually came there together — it is said severe fighting 
between those rival bodies of saints, diversified the scenes till 
the government directed the Vienna pilgrims to come on the 
2d of July, and those from Gratz on the 12th of August, to 
prevent the scandalous scenes which disgraced the sacred 
locality when they met there. It is some seventy or eighty 
miles from Vienna. These processions move in organized 
columns or files, in detachments headed by men bearing ban- 
ners of the cross. The men are dressed in a peasant's 
dress, with broad straw hats, and the women in their best 
apparel, white linen caps and laces, in their usual costume 



332 VOTIVE OFFERINGS. 

— and the music to which they march is now some gentle 
and soothing melody, and now some more powerful and 
stirring harmony, that in unity and variety, forms one swell- 
ing strain, to which these tramping bands keep time, in their 
march over hill and dale. 

The sovereigns of Austria have always been among the 
most zealous devotees of the shrine of Mariazell, and have 
left there the most costly offerings. This was especially true 
of her greatest monarch, Maria Theresa. In 1741 she 
made to this holy image a present of sixteen pounds two 
ounces and a half — weight — of silver as an offering of grat- 
itude for being safely delivered of a son of precisely that 
weight. She thought him worth his weight in silver at 
least. 

I have thus jotted down a notice of another of these larger 
and more striking local superstitions which are parasites of 
the Roman Catholic religion. Everywhere, where that 
church has grown up through the lapse of many centuries, 
these almost includible fables have easily — in a dark age — 
fastened upon her, or rather sprung from her. Did I not 
pick up in every country of Catholic Europe some striking 
representative legend of the same great family, planted in 
the midst of intelligence — patronized by the rich, protected 
by the government, sanctified by the priesthood, and appar- 
ently believed in by all — I might, perhaps, be open to the 
allegation that I had mistaken a characteristic of a local peo- 
ple or province, for a trait of religion. To show their 
universality, I record them everywhere, and I call them par- 
asites of that religion, because they are no necessary part of 
it, and yet strike their roots into it, and draw their support 
from its vitals. Will they do so in our country, and flour- 
ish with the same exuberant and perennial growth in the 
midst of free thought, universal education, religious equality, 
and no sacerdotal secular power ? I think not — I think that 



WAGRAM- 666 

church is to be spread in our country more by whatever it 
has of reasonableness, simplicity, and intelligibility, than by 
the traditional absurdities which hang about it in Europe. 

Leaving Vienna for Prague, the train passes over the 
bloody battle-field of Wagram, where — in the first days of 
July. 1809 — Napoleon, with Bernadotte, Davoust, Massena, 
Marmont, Oudinot, and Vandamme, and one hundred and 
eighty thousand troops, fought the Archduke Charles with 
half as great a force and defeated him after a loss of twenty- 
seven thousand killed and wounded on each side, which 
practically ended his war with Austria. In a few short 
months he repudiated Josephine, and married Maria Louisa. 
He yielded himself up a willing sacrifice to the legitimacy 
which had been the enemy of his power and glory, and over 
which he had triumphed in every victory. He threw away 
the opportunity and the power of building up, fortifying, per- 
petuating, and glorifying during his whole life a Napoleonic 
France — an empire such as the world had never looked upon 
— and leaving it to that France to choose his successor. 
When we think of what Napoleon might have been, and might 
have done — and what he did, and how he dragged out his last 
years, a poor and desolate prisoner, his own heart corroded 
and wasting by disappointment and repining, we cannot 
help thinking that — 

" In these cases 

We still have, judgment here." 

After passing Brunn, the thriving manufacturing town 
— which is the capital of Moravia — we soon rose to the 
summit level of this part of Europe, where the streams take 
a northerly direction, and our journey lay for a while along 
the valley of the Elbe, which rising in these highlands keeps 
on its way to the North sea. The valley is a plain of im 
mense extent, and of beautiful cultivation, and of great fer- 



334 OUT-DOOR WORK OF "WOMEN. 

tility, and seemed to be divided among a few large landed 
proprietors, who here and there at a distance of a mile 
or so apart,- seemed to be living in a sort of manorial style, 
with their retainers or dependents clustered about them in 
humble peasant cottages, giving to the whole scene the 
appearances of small villages scattered all over the great plain. 
All the hardest of the out-door work is done by women, who 
seemed to far outnumber the men. We saw few men and 
fewer cattle, while the fields and roads swarmed with labor- 
ing women, young and old. They were spreading manure 
in the fields — was a house being erected, it was women 
who carried the hod of brick and mortar, while the mechanic 
laid the walls — men sometimes loaded the wheel-barrows 
with heavy stones, but it was women that wheeled the stag- 
gering load to its destination — they receive almost no 
wages, and the coarsest fare — four or five cents a day, and an 
allowance of coarse fish and black bread enough to sustain 
life and position in a class from which there is no hope of 



dlmttx % iMttig-first. 

BOHEMIA — PRAGUE. 

PRAGUE, like so many of these old towns, has an early 
history, in which it is quite impossible to discover the 
line which separates fact from fable. More than a thousand 
years ago, says tradition and legend, Libussa, an Amazon- 
ian heroine, who united in her person the character of soldier 
and priestess, selected this place for the beginning of an em- 
pire. She cut away the forest and established her residence 
on a rocky precipice, which she fortified. Sensual and ca- 
pricious, she selected her lovers from among her followers 
and dependants. She soon tired of them, and as soon as 
her fancy changed, she caused the discarded favorite to be 
thrown from the rocky height of her castle to the rocky 
base below, and immediately installed a new candidate in her 
favor. The rocky base goes even now by the name of Li- 
bussa's bed. Finally her fancy chose a young peasant, after- 
ward called Premislas, who knew how to fasten her affec- 
tions and curb her wandering fancies. He made himself 
her master, as well by the skilful management of her affec- 
tions as*by the force of his will — and in her name and os- 



336 PRAGUE. 

tensibly by her, he laid out the beginning of Prague on the 
rocky height?, which now form part of it — and she in his 
presence, surrounded by the subordinate leaders of her peo- 
ple, in the double character of Queen and Priestess, with 
sybilline frenzy and stirring eloquence, prophesied the fu- 
ture greatness, fame and glory of the infant city, which she 
then called by its present name Prag, said to be significant 
of its position and rocky grades. She and Premislas devot- 
ed their united energies to establishing and extending their 
power — and from them were descended the early line of the 
Dukes of Bohemia, whose capital was Prague. 

They are said to have built first the Hradschin, the roy- 
al palaces, and the Kleinseite, which lies about the foot of the 
Hradschin. Next was built or began what was then called the 
New Town, on the other side of the river, and which now is 
known as the Old Town, and embraces the Jews' town or 
Jews' quarter, occupied by some eight thousand Israelites. 
Subsequently has been added the modern new town, the 
whole forming a city of about one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand people, and ten or twelve miles in circumference. It 
contains about three thousand six hundred houses, and sixty 
places of worship besides nunneries and monasteries. It is 
in latitude 50° — three degrees farther north than Quebec, 
and yet enjoys a tolerably mild climate, though said to be 
subject to sudden changes. It was exceedingly agreeable 
and pleasant while we were there. The Hradschin is the 
royal quarter of the city — stretching along the brow of a 
high hill. It is the palace, and the towers, and the prisons, 
and the cathedral, and the other institutions of the sover- 
eignty of Bohemia, now absorbed in the Austrian empire. 
The Kleinseite, lying on the bank of the river at the foot of 
the palace hill, is the residence of the higher nobility. These 
are on the left bank of the river. On the right bank are 
the old town, the quaint old home of the people, the*priests, 



THE BRIDGE OF PRAGUE. 337 

the men of letters and the burghers, embracing the Jews- 
quarter — and about it is spread out the new town, bright, 
airy, modern and thrifty, with its commerce and manufac- 
tures, its railroad depots and useful activity. 

Prague — Praga — proud, venerable, old Prague, the capital 
of Bohemia, is one of the most interesting capitals of Eu- 
rope. Although united to Austria, and no longer an inde- 
pendent sovereignty, one cannot help looking at it as still 
the capital so famous for near a thousand years, and as the 
scene of events, political, religious, and literary, so stirring 
and wonderful. It rises in irregular and rocky heights from 
both sides of the Moldau, which are covered by the finest 
buildings of the city, and are connected by a massive stone- 
bridge seventeen hundred and ninety feet long and thirty- 
five feet wide, consisting of sixteen arches. This bridge is 
a striking object, but more for its solidity and strength than 
for its beauty. From it, in various directions, the eye takes 
in Prague and its environs ; and standing on its side-walks 
you have but to ask the history and meaning of the strange 
objects which seem to cluster about you, and stories of ro- 
mantic and legendary lore, of history and fable and fiction 
might while away the livelong day. Its history suggests the 
history of Prague and subjects for a library of romances — for 
Prague has a history which, written with the pen of a mas- 
ter, should be as attractive and as spirit-stirring, without de- 
parting from the sober truth, as any great chapter of the 
story of the world. On its towers are inscriptions and bla- 
zonry which declare the past glories of Bohemia. The de- 
fence of the bridge of Garigliano against two hundred Span- 
ish cavalry by the chevalier Bayard alone, does not equal 
the valor and civic devotion of the great Jesuit, George Pla- 
chy, who, when the bridge was about to be crossed by two 
thousand five hundred Swedes, victorious thus far, rushed 
out of the college, and with three soldiers and a handful of 

16 



338 THE COLUMN OF BRUNSLIK. 

students and the port-cullis, which he instantly let fall, de- 
fended the bridge and saved the town. 

The bridge is surmounted by statues in great numbers, 
each of which had its history and traditions — and there are 
also inscriptions, historical and religious. The statues ar% 
almost one hundred and fifty years old, and some of them 
have considerable merit as works of art. They are the sub- 
ject of a folio, published in 1714, entitled Statuce Pontis Pra- 
gensis. The river sweeps through the town in the form of a 
crescent, which, while it leaves in sight from the bridge all 
the islands, brings into the panorama most interesting views 
on both banks. It is not without a show of truth at least, 
that the citizens of Prague insist that, seen from the bridge, 
especially, it is unequalled by any city in Europe. Had Bo- 
hemia maintained her separate independence, and preserved 
a throne and a court, whose royal memories and national 
glories had centred in Prague, and fertilized it by regal 
munificence and courtly splendors, it must have been with- 
out a parallel. Besides ' ' The Bridge," there is a suspension 
bridge, and numerous ferries. 

An old saying it is, that you cannot cross the bridge with- 
out meeting a priest, a student, and a Jew — priests and stu- 
dents and Jews having been in all periods remarkable char- 
acteristics of Prague. In the immediate vicinity of the 
bridge are the university, the theological seminaries, the 
great churches, and the great quarter of the Jews. With 
them and the bridge and its sights and sculptures and in- 
scriptions, ai*e connected all that there is or has been of 
Prague. 

There is built into one of the piers of this bridge a trun- 
cated statue, with its base, representing in the sculpture of 
the middle ages, an armed figure and a lion with other acces- 
sories. The statue was broken off by a cannon shot of the 
Swedes in 1648. This is the statue or column of Brunslik. 



ST. JOHN NEPOMUK. 839 

Brunslik was an early and warlike King of Bohemia. He 
was always accompanied by a tamed and affectionate lion 
who followed his steps, and watched and defended his person 
like a watch dosr. Brunslik had also a wonderful falchion 
which, when he extended his arm and commanded the sword 
to strike, would strike, of itself, blows that would cleave his 
enemies in two. Notwithstanding such defences, the chan- 
ces of war drove him from his kingdom, and he wandered 
through foreign parts, always finding protection and safety 
in his faithful lion and his mysterious scimetar. His lion 
died and he cast his magical sword into the Moldau, by the 
bridge near where this column is now seen. After this, 
from time to time that scimetar rises to the surface, but sud- 
denly disappears, and all attempts to find it have been un- 
availing, though there is some prophecy about its being ulti- 
mately found. 

The two most interesting of these monuments on the bridge, 
are the huge statues of St. John Nepomuk and the bronze cru- 
cifix with stars. They have always had a way of their own 
of settling difficult personal questions in Prague, which has 
been resorted to so often that it is called the " Bohemian fash- 
ion " — it is to pitch your adversary out of the window, or 
off a precipice or a bridge — a kind of quickstep, extempore, 
Tarpeian end to controversy — perhaps derived from the 
mode in which Libussa disposed of her lovers. A little less 
than five hundred years ago, King Wenceslaus had, or fan- 
cied he had, some reason to doubt his young and beautiful 
queen, and so, as a short way to learn the truth, he sent for 
John Nepomuk, her confessor, and ordered him to reveal the 
secrets of the confessional. The priest, of course, at first 
remonstrated with his royal master against the sacrilegious 
demand, but the king was positive, prompt, and inexorable, 
and John as positively and inflexibly refused to be guilty of 
such an act of infamy and treachery, and so the Lord's 



340 THE ANNUAL FESTIVAL. 

anointed pitched the poor priest headlong off the bridge into 
the river. Tongues of flame were observed to stand and 
tremble over a spot in the river, and they remained there so 
long that the river was dragged to satisfy curiosity and fath- 
om the mystery, when the body of the murdered ecclesiastic 
was brought to the surface. 

In due time, hundreds of years afterward, a statue was 
raised to him on the bridge, and finally the present bronze 
statue, eight feet high, and weighing two thousand pounds, 
was cast at Nuremberg, and placed on the bridge, at the cost 
of seven thousand florins. He was canonized in 1726, and 
his annual festival is a curiosity even in Europe — so immense 
is the crowd of people from all parts who throng the bridge 
and its vicinity, to do honor to the saint on the spot of his 
singular martyrdom. A chapel enclosing the statue is erect- 
ed for the occasion on the bridge, the bridge is blocked up 
with people, carriages are forbidden to attempt to pass, and 
persons on foot almost peril their lives in mingling in the 
crowd. Eighty-four thousand pilgrims are said to have been 
there in one year, mass was said from the temporary chapel 
to this immense multitude — and twenty-four priests were 
constantly occupied, for I don't know how many days, in 
hearing confessions and administering the holy sacrament. 
St. John Nepomuk, is the patron Saint of bridges. 

In 1696 some Jews were charged with an insult to the 
Christian mass, and on conviction were mulcted in heavy 
penalties. The money was invested in a beautiful crucifix 
cast at Dresden and placed on the bridge. It is surmounted 
by five stars, representing those supernatural flames which 
stood on the water on the spot where the saint was thrown 
into the river. 

The Jews are thus, by one of the most conspicuous monu- 
ments on this remarkable bridge, reminded of their humilia- 
tion. It is but a step from the bridge to the Jews-quarter, 



THE JEWS-QUARTER. 341 

and as the proverb says, you will always meet them on the 
bridge. 

I understand there is not in Europe a more venerable and 
interesting Jews-quarter than in Prague. There is no pos- 
sibility, I believe, of fixing the date of the settlement of the 
Jews here. The oldest chronicles, and the earliest tradi- 
tions speak of them. The Jews-town is part of the old 
town. Its thirty-two streets are narrow and angular, and 
the two hundred and seventy-nine houses, high and of several 
stories — and a single house belongs in part to several owners. 
There is an average of more than thirty persons to one 
house. Indeed it is said that this ancient people are stran- 
gers to neatness wherever they are found in Europe. It is 
however, true, that when the cholera swept so fatally over 
Europe, in Prague the Jews-quarter suffered less than the 
more open, airy, and neater portion of the city. They live 
longer also, and are more prolific. 

It was one of the characteristic reforms of Joseph II., that 
first secured to this peaceable and thrifty but persecuted peo- 
ple, a considerable relaxation of their restraints, and relief 
from the oppressions which before his reign bore so heavily 
upon them. It was a common accusation against them that 
they insulted the Host in its processions, and such charges 
were the signal for terribly extortionate fines, — sometimes 
murderous slaughters well nigh exterminated these defence- 
less and patient citizens, whose principal characteristics are 
peaceable long-suffering, patient and persistent minding of 
their own business, and conscientious and consistent but 
fearless worship of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of 
Jacob, after the manner of their fathers. There is no dark- 
er stain on the character of Christian nations than their 
treatment of the Jews, and nowhere was that treatment 
more cruel than in this city. This may, in part, be attrib- 
uted to the fact that here is the oldest Synagogue in Eu- 



342 THE ANCIENT SYNAGOGUE. 

rope, — here they have their own city-hall, where the Elders 
of Israel transact their peculiar business — here they follow 
more strictly than elsewhere the customs of their ancient re- 
ligion and polity, and here, of course, they are almost en- 
tirely a city of themselves. They have nine large ana 1 
twelve smaller synagogues, a hospital, an orphan asylum, 
charity schools, and the most unique and interesting ceme- 
tery, whose antiquity is unfathomable. There is a Jewish 
brotherhood for the care of the sick. The oldest synagogue 
of all looks within and without as though it might be as, 
they say it is, one thousand years old, — old Methusela, who 
showed it to us, said thirteen hundred years old. I should 
not think it had been swept or dusted in as many years as 
that. The dust and filth are in situ, evidently antedating 
the soap period, and you would no more expect to find the 
remains of a brush or a broom in its alluvion than you would 
a set of sculptor's tools imbedded in primitive granite. It 
is a small Gothic building, with narrow windows, giving 
hardly light enough to see to read its parchment-books of 
Moses, six hundred years old ! Its heavy gold embroidered 
draperies, " a golden bell and a pomegranate," are eleven 
hundred years old ! They have a flag presented by Charles 
TV. , five hundred years ago. The women's apartment is 
entirely shut out from the men's, and is much meaner and 
shabbier. There are only small crevices for windows, 
through which they hear the prayers and music, and join in 
the singing, but can neither see nor be seen. The Jews have 
their traditions and relics and fabulous tales, and if we un- 
believers doubt some of these high numbers of years, we 
cannot doubt the very great antiquity of this venerable little 
sanctuary, and its internal appointments and ornaments. It 
is an object of great attraction to a most reasonable curiosi- 
ty. It is certainly the oldest building I have ever seen, kept 
up and still used for the purpose for which it was built. It 
is now used only, on occasions of extraordinary solemnity. 



THE JEWS. 343 

In old times the Jews were confined to their quarters — 
now the wealthy Hebrews often reside in fashionable houses 
in the fine streets of the town. Here, as well as everywhere 
else, the prejudices and severities which have oppressed them 
are much relaxed, and we may reasonably expect, before 
long, to see them raised to the level of equality with other 
races and religions. How extraordinary are those preju- 
dices and severities. There are, say, six millions of Jews in 
the world, descended from the remnants of the most cele- 
brated nation ever known — scattered in large bodies through- 
out all the nations — everywhere maintaining their exclusive 
Abrahamic pedigree, and their peculiar religion, and under 
no matter what disabilities, and what oppressions, yet never, 
for nearly two thousand years, making any effort to come 
together and reconstruct a national existence. 

With a religion, which is the divine foundation of all true 
religion — its ecclesiastical ceremonies and appointments, 
prescribed in detail by God himself, in the midst of the sub- 
limities of Sinai — with a literature of poems and songs, and 
tales and histories, older by hundreds of years than Homer 
and Hesiod, and Herodotus and Thucydides, and superior 
to them all, and always preserved and cherished in all its 
purity and power, in all their dispersions — in every sense a 
great race, yet always despised and trodden under foot by 
the nations to which, at the same time, they were furnishing 
councillors and ministers of state, and money lenders, and 
the divinely inspired books of their religion. "We wonder 
at the prejudices which pursue them everywhere, and we 
wonder still more at their own prejudices, which cause them 
to disbelieve the prophecies, while they profess to believe 
the prophets, and at the blindness which shuts their eyes 
to the prophecies in which they have the deepest interest, 
and of which their own condition is, in Christian judgment, 
the most striking fulfilment. Here, as elsewhere, they have 
proved their sincerity and their faith. 



344 THE TEIN CnURCH. 

In the Tein Church — which is near the Jews' -quarter — 
among other monuments is one of Simon Abel, a Jewish 
martyr, of twelve years of age, sacrificed by his father for 
having become a Christian. 

The Tein Church is a celebrated church. Its early his- 
tory is connected with the introduction of Christianity into 
Bohemia. It has passed from one side to the other of the 
great religious strifes which have distracted the country, and 
its distinguished dead have been torn from their graves and 
burned, and their ashes scattered. It has good pictures, 
and sculptures, and many monuments. Tycho Brahe, the 
great Dane, was buried here in 1601, and over his tomb is 
written his own motto — Esse potius quam haberi — "Let 
me be reputed only what I am." In this church, the 
Utraquists worshipped in the days of their prosperity, and 
two of their bishops were buried here. After the battle of 
1621, in which Protestantism wa3 prostrated here for the 
time, the vengeance of Ferdinand was pacified by the exe- 
cution of nobles and high officers, and councillors and in- 
ferior persons without number, and their heads that con- 
ceived and their hands that wrought the opposition to him, 
were stuck upon the gate-towers of the bridge. A subse- 
quent triumph of the Protestants took down their bleaching 
bones and buried them in the Tein Church. 

The Clementine College, and the University, are not far 
from the bridge in the old town. The Clementine College 
is the Arch-Episcopal Theological Seminary. The Univer- 
sity is the oldest in Germany, having been established in 
1348, and it was at one period the largest in the world. Its 
fame, and its privileges, attracted students from all parts of 
the civilized world in immense numbers, which, for con- 
venience, were divided into four classes, the Bohemians, the 
Bavarians, the Poles, and the Saxons — each of which classes 
embraced the students of several other nations. The whole 



THE UNIVEKSITY. 345 

number at this time is said to have amounted to the almost 
incredible total of forty thousand. At the hours of depart- 
ing from the lectures, they swept through the streets of the 
city like a pursuing army, so that finally they rang a hell 
a quarter of an hour before, to give notice to the inhabitants 
of the coming rush, that they might leave the streets free. 
In the days of the power and influence of Huss, the students 
from other nations so greatly outnumbered the Bohemians, 
that he thought that the natives had not their appropriate 
influence, so he adopted measures by which Bohemians were 
to rule Bohemia — at least so far as the University was con- 
cerned. By the law of its organization, each nation was io 
have an equal vote, and his discriminations against foreign- 
ers were so unacceptable, that twenty-five thousand (?) stu- 
dents seceded in one week, and several of the more celebrated 
European universities are said to have sprung from this 
dispersion. It left, however, the University of Prague 
under the influence of Huss, who was its rector, and made 
it the school of opinions so powerfully taught by himself 
and Jerome, and which were maintained there, and made it 
the headquarters of protestantism — the radiating point of 
the Utraquist sect for a long period of the Hussite con- 
flicts. The scenes of tumult, and strife, and hlood, which 
disturbed and disgraced that part of Europe, could not fail 
to bring, to the corridors and lecture-rooms of the university, 
the agitation and disorder of the tide, which ebbed and 
flowed without, as the one party or the other seemed about 
to triumph. Finally, the battle of the White Hill decided 
the question in favor of the Roman Catholics, and abolished 
the Protestant faith in the university. Two hundred years 
have wrought a great change. The Archbishop of Prague 
is still Chancellor and Protector of the University, but the 
measures of Maria Theresa, and her son Joseph n., have so 
greatly improved Austrian education, that the universities, 

15* 



346 HRADSCHIN. 

as well as colleges, for Lutherans, Calvinists, Unitarians, 
and Jews, furnish reasonable advantages of education to the 
nonconforming sects. 

We went through the royal palace of the Hradschin, and 
found it more imperial and magnificent than anything we 
have yet seen. In style and air, in position and out-look — 
in its artificial as well as in its natural surroundings, it 
seems almost the beau ideal of a royal residence. It is said 
to contain four hundred and forty apartments. There are 
connected with it the towers and dungeons of mediaeval 
tyranny and cruelty — the white, or round tower, in which 
criminals were thrown and starved to death — the square, or 
black tower, where criminals, after having been tortured, 
were, without trial, forced into the embrace of the iron girl 
— an image in the dress and appearance of an agreeable 
maid, which, as soon as touched, threw out arms and clasped 
the victim to a bloody death upon the sharp spikes which 
bristled beneath its dress — and the tower of the Daliborka, 
in whose two dungeons above ground the sun never shines, 
and whose walls are furnished with only chains, and bars, and 
ring-bolts. The trap door, raised by a pulley at the ceiling, is 
the only ingress — there was no egress except to die — to a 
subterranean dungeon ninety feet deep, to the bottom of 
which the criminal Avas lowered by a rope. It takes its 
name from Dalibor, a knight who was immured there and was 
allowed to take with him his violin. It was his only 
resource and amusement. An accomplished performer, 
when he entered that dreadful pit, his soul was soon wrap- 
ped up in the instrument, and what strains, says tradition, 
sent their floating echoes from that dungeon depth ! His 
constant and solitary practice seemed to give a divine power 
to his violin to discourse in heavenly harmonies. 

We stood beside two stone monuments just under the 
palace walls, which proved to be landmarks of the spot 



CHURCH OF ST. VITUS. 347 

where, in 1618, two of the high nobility who were members 
of the imperial council, and were supposed to have advised 
certain unpopular decrees of their imperial master, fell, 
when tossed by the assembled nobility, out of the palace 
window, thirty feet high. Falling on a dunghill they were 
not killed. This indignity and the causes of it were the 
beginning of the thirty years' war. The palace chapel is a 
beautiful Gothic church with a gem of a statue — St. George 
and the Dragon — in the court. 

We were very much interested in the Chapter, a nunnery 
for noble ladies. It is connected with the palace, and was 
established and endowed by Maria Theresa in 1755, as a re- 
ligious retreat for thirty ladies of quality not under twenty- 
four years of age. The unpretentious, modest style, and 
aristocratic humility of all its appointments, were in the 
highest taste. 

In the immediate vicinity of the Hradschin are the grand 
palaces of some of the highest nobility, and there are 
museums, and galleries, and libraries which — if one were to 
spend a week in Prague — would repay a visit, as we were 
informed, but we had no time to devote to them, and after 
our visit to the Cathedral we left the Hradschin. The 
Cathedral or Church of St. Voit, St. Veit— English, St. 
Vitus — is more than five hundred years old, and is remark- 
able for many objects of interest besides its monuments. It 
is the Westminster Abbey of Bohemia. It has its various 
chapels — ten of them — each of which has its peculiarities, 
and its numerous monuments. The chapel of St. Wenceslas 
is thickly set with the precious stones of Bohemia, ame- 
thysts, chrysoprases, jaspers, &c. The statue of the saint 
himself was cast by Vischer of Nuremburg from cannon taken 
from the Hussites. The armor which he wore in battle is 
there, and the strong and heavy ring, with a lion's head, 
like an immense old fashioned knocker, to which he cluna; to 



348 TOMB OF ST. JOHN NEPOMUK. 

save himself from the fury of his murderous brother, more 
than nine hundred years ago, is fastened in the wall for all 
that choose to handle. 

The Martin itz family has a chapel. The hero of the 
family was one of the ministers of state who were tossed out 
of the window by the nobles. The family of Count Wald- 
stein have a chapel also, where the counts of the last two 
hundred years are buried. There is the tomb of St. John 
Nepomuk, all of silver. The weight of silver is three thou- 
sand and seven hundred pounds. The body of the saint, 
taken up after three hundred and thirty-six years, reposes 
in a coffin of solid silver. It is covered by a baldaquin, 
supported at the four corners by angels, also of solid silver. 
Silver candelabra stand by it, and the hanging lamps which 
light it, are all of silver. The whole constitutes a very 
striking monument — one of the most remarkable in Europe. 
The tongue of the saint which would not reveal the 
queen's confession, is kept in a cut glass vase, and is now as 
fresh as it was three hundred years ago ! The shrine of this 
saint is one of the richest and most showy in the world. 
About it are also some very interesting monumental sculp- 
tures, and the tombs of many royal and noble persons. In 
the middle of the church is the magnificent tomb of the 
kings of Bohemia, reared by Rudolph II., at an expense of 
thirty-two thousand ducats. It is of white Carrara marble. 
There are also on the high altar four figures — St. Wenceslas, 
St. Adalbert, St. Cyril, and St. Vitus, the patrons of Bohe- 
mia — in solid silver, weighing one thousand pounds. Here 
is the picture of St. Luke painting the holy Virgin. It cost 
three thousand ducats — about seven thousand dollars. 

The church is not only a temple of fame for the great 
Bohemian dead, but is quite an old curiosity shop besides. 
There is here a curious representation of the whole city of 
Prague, with the triumphant entry of Maximilian, all cut 



JOHN HUSS. 349 

from one piece of wood — there is a model of the original 
tower of the church before its destruction by the great fire 
of 1541. There is a representation in sculpture of the 
sacking of this church in 1619, by Frederic. Its most val- 
uable relic of antiquity is a portion — a triangular foot — of 
a candelabrum, which, they say, was originally in the tem- 
ple of Solomon at Jerusalem, brought thence by Titus, taken 
to Milan by the Crusaders, and on a division of the plunder 
of Milan, seven hundred years ago, taken by the king of 
Bohemia and presented to this church. It is an exceedingly 
interesting relic, certainly of great antiquity, and of eastern 
origin, if not in reality what tradition says it is. 

The Ziskaberg — Ziska's hill — in the suburbs of the new 
town, suggests passages of history of the deepest interest. 
John Huss, the learned, the eloquent, the devout, and the 
fearless, was found f=o dangerous a champion of reformed 
opinions, that he was invited to defend his opinions before 
the Council of Constance. King Wenceslaus granted him a 
noble escort, the Empei'or Sigismund guarantied his safety and 
gave him letters of safe conduct, and, after he arrived at Con- 
stance, the Pope also promised him personal safety — but his 
arguments were too strong to be tolerated by the assembled 
delegates of the Church, and, notwithstanding all their 
guaranties, he was seized and finally burned at the stake, 
and his ashes were cast into the Rhine. The manner of his 
death — his saintly bearing and joyous pi'ayers, as the flames 
curled around him excited the admiration of his enemies. 
His friends at Prague were maddened to frenzy by the 
treachery and falsehood of the Emperor and the Pope, and 
the cowardly and bigoted tyranny of that immense Council, 
in which the Emperor, and twenty-six princes, and one hun- 
dred and forty counts, the Pope, and twenty cardinals, and 
more than six hundred other clerical dignitaries of the 
highest order, and four thousand priests, stooped to the 



350 JEROME OF PRAGUE. 

meanness of murdering an exemplary, pure, and learned 
divine, who had presented himself before them on their in- 
vitation, trusting to their honor. 

Jerome of Prague, the associate of Huss, and greater 
than he, hearing of his imprisonment at Constance, in viola- 
tion of the pledges for his protection, was indignant, and 
hurried to give him the aid of his own greater learning and 
eloquence — but he was seized and carried in chains to Con- 
stance and thrown into prison. Worn down with sickness 
and confinement, in a moment of weakness, he consented to 
recant the heresies alleged against him and Huss. He was, 
however, kept in prison, and with returning health, his soul 
came back to him, and he repented and wept bitterly over 
his apostacy, as the greatest of all his sins. He declared that 
he was ashamed to live, and they consigned him to the flames. 
On his way to the stake he chanted the Apostles' creed and 
sacred songs, and prayed with a cheerful voice. Poggio, 
the Pope's secretary, who was present, says that Mutius 
Scccvola did not burn his arm with more firmness than Je- 
rome did his whole body, and that Socrates did not drink his 
hemlock with more cheerfulness than this martyr suffered 
the flames of the burning fagots. When the lictor went 
behind him to light the pile that he might not see it, " Come 
here," he said, " kindle your fire before my face — if I were 
afraid of it I should not be here to be burned." His ashes, 
too, were thrown into the Ehine to blot out his memory for- 
ever, but as long as the Rhine shall run to the sea, so long 
shall the earthly fame and the glory of these two great Chris- 
tian martyrs grow brighter to the eye and dearer to the 
hearts of those who love the Lord. 

There is in one of the libraries here a Hussite liturgy 
splendidly illuminated. On one of its pages, occur three 
striking and significant miniatures suggesting the sublimest 
of moral views. They are Wicklif striking a light — Huss 



THE UTRAQUISTS. 351 

blowing it to a, flame — Luther holding the blazing torch. — 
Five hundred years ago, in what a darkness, Wicklif struck 
that light — it was forty years after his death that Huss, in 
the centre of learning and of civilization, blew that light into a 
living flame — one hundred and twenty years after he died 
at the stake, Luther waved that torch aloft, till all Europe 
was enlightened by its rays, and now, wherever has been 
heard the glad tidings of great joy to all people, there the 
torch of Luther sheds a light, in which the nations rejoice — 
for where it is held in the greatest abhorence, all but its ene- 
mies see that it modifies and meliorates that system of Chris- 
tianity with which it is in the most irreconcilable antag- 
onism. 

One of the alleged departures of the Roman Catholic 
Church from the commands of the Master, and from the 
practice of the Apostles and primitive Christians, was the 
denying to the laity the use of the cup in the Holy Eu- 
charist. It required but a feeble eye directed to the Gospel, 
to see that the bread and the wine were alike offered to all 
by the Savior — indeed, of the wine especially, he said, 
" drink ye all." In Bohemia, the beginning of the reforma- 
tion turned upon this as a principal point, and the reformers 
took the name of Utraquists, from their insisting upon the 
communion in both kinds. 

On the death of Huss and Jerome, their multiplying 
friends — at Prague and in other portions of Bohemia — made 
no secret of their wrath, which was, however, restrained till 
private griefs called to the field — as their military leader — 
blind Ziska — then blind in only one eye. He was a noble 
Bohemian who had enjoyed life at court — had seen service 
under the Teutonic knights — had fought the Poles and the 
Turks, and had just returned from the English service at 
Agincourt, to learn that his sister, a nun, had been dishon- 
ored by a monk — and his sympathy with the Utraquists, and 



352 ziska. 

their need of a leader, gave him an opportunity of revenge — 
not upon the guilty hypocrite who had wronged his sister, 
but upon those who held the same faith. 

He armed the people and led them. The first outbreak 
was caused by a Utraquist priest being struck by a stone*, 
while walking in a procession, when the people, set on by 
Ziska, surrounded and stormed the City Hall, and threw 
thirteen of the city magistrates out of the window upon the 
pikes of the soldiers. They rushed through the city, and in 
the fury of iconoclastic fanaticism, with fire and force, 
mutilated and destroyed churches, and altars, plate, and 
robes, and vestments, and sculptures, and paintings, and 
stained windows — whatever their adversaries held sacred. 
King Wenceslaus died of fright on the occasion, which gave 
the throne to his brother, the faithless Sigismund, the Em- 
peror who had been so treacherous to Huss. He soon be- 
gan to execute the Hussites. 

The blood of the Utraquists was now up, and Ziska swore 
he would never acknowledge Sigismund as King of Bohemia. 
The Emperor made his appearance at the head of thirty 
thousand troop?, to extinguish the little band of four thou- 
sand ill-armed and undisciplined troops, commanded by 
Ziska and entrenched on a hill bristling with stockades and 
barricaded by wagons — since called Ziska' s hill. The little 
garrison of these extemporaneous fortifications sustained re- 
peated assaults, and finally dashed down the hill and put to 
flight the army of seven times their number. He soon had 
arms and cavalry. He organized his desperate legion called 
the Invincible Brethren. His army swelled rapidly. His 
movements had the rapidity of magic. He won thirteen 
pitched battles, and more than a hundred lesser fights, 
and was never defeated. His cruelties were barbarous 
and bloody beyond parallel. The bigots of the Council 
of Constance who burned Huss and Jerome were gentle and 



HIS BLINDNESS. 353 

merciful, compared with this bloody Utraquist soldier. 
The cries of those whom, without mercy, he sent to the 
burning fagots, he called the songs of his sister's bridal 
day. 

During his later years Ziska was stone blind, and he was 
carried on a car to the field of battle — but he was none the 
less the life and power of his army than before. It was a 
sublime exhibition of human power, as he sat on his car, in 
the presence of his army of forty thousand — nothing daunt- 
ed in the encounter of one hundred and fifty thousand — and 
as they brought him the state of the fight, from different por- 
tions of the field, he rolled his sightless eye-balls, as though 
he saw where to order his archers where to send his forlorn 
hope armed with that terrible Bohemian flail, heavy with 
knots and iron bands, and bristling with spikes, which no 
shield could withstand, .and no skill in fence could parry — 
and where the Invincible Brethren swept down upon the 
advancing foe, and scattered them like sheep. This wonder- 
ful general died of a sort of plague at the little town of 
Czaslau — and his spirit and that of his army may in some 
sort be judged by the fact that his followers — maddened by 
his death — stormed the town, burned it to ashes, and killed 
every one of its inhabitants. 

The Protestant religion became the religion of a large 
majority of the people of Bohemia, but after the battle of 
Prague, the House of Hapsburg visited upon the Protestant 
population a terrible retaliation of earlier Protestant barbari- 
ties. Executions, banishment, confiscation, and other 
oppressions, wielded by the hand of absolute power, estab- 
lished the Catholic religion, to the exclusion of all others, 
and forced ministers, and people, nobles, and knights, artists, 
manufacturers, and farmers, to the amount of near forty 
thousand families, of the most valuable classes of subjects, to 
flee their country, and to leave the Roman Catholics in quiet 



354 THE CHUKCII MILITANT. 

possession — and only a few years later, the country was 
desolated and depleted by the thirty-years' war, to an extent 
almost unparalleled in the history of war. Under the reign 
of Maria Theresa it again rallied, and its mines are now 
productive, and its manufactories prosperous. The Bohe- 
mian glass is unequalled, and few travellers leave Prague 
without carrying with them specimens of its fabrics in glass, 
so curious and beautiful. 

Till the time of Maria Theresa, Bohemia seems to have 
been the centre of religious strifes and fanatical cruelties. 
Who was it — Madame Roland, I believe — that said, " Oh, 
liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name !" How 
easy to say, too, of our holy religion, what crimes are com- 
mitted in her name ! What wars and battles, massacres, 
and blood, in the name of the Prince of Peace. "My 
kingdom is not of this world," said the Master — " if my 
kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." 
How it would look to see the rival hosts of Christians, glitter- 
ing in armor to establish their faith — defying each other 
a Voutrance — fighting and giving no quarter for a question in 
the catechism — and as the volleys rattled along the lines, 
and the cannon boomed over the field, and the bayonets 
dripped with blood, to see the banners that waved over 
them all, inscribed with the Beatitudes ! But wars and 
fightings, with their blood and crimes, are not more opposed 
to the spirit of true religion, than the fagots and the stake of 
persecution — the dungeons and the tortures of the Inquisi- 
tion, and the terrors of the holy office — not more than the 
intolerance and sectarian cxclusiveness and hostility of our 
own times, and of some of our own Protestant champions of 
the right of private judgment, free thought, and universal 
investigation. Substitute for the ruin and desolations of 
fanaticism the productiveness of peace on earth and good 
will to men — and how different would be the condition, not 
only of Bohemia, but of the human race. 



PRAGUE TO DRESDEN. 355 

Leaving Prague, we descended the Moldau till it empties 
into the Elbe, and then the Elbe to Dresden — a distance of 
one hundred and twenty-eight miles, diversified by much 
that is sti iking in its novelty as well as its beauty. The 
rocky and pent-up banks of the Moldau — the magnificent 
plain into which they subside, like an amphitheatre, and 
which they seem to encircle like a breastwork — then coming 
near to the river again, almost shutting it in — and then sweep- 
ing out into another plain — then this plain breaking up into 
hillocks and peaks — some surmounted with castles — in the 
distance one peak apparently fifteen hundred to two 
thousand feet in height — cultivated to the top — the only ob- 
ject on its top a cross one hundred feet high, visible to all 
the country round, and all this country finely cultivated — 
these can only be hinted at without any attempt at descrip- 
tion. 

I noticed, on that journey, what seemed to me a case of 
what I should call architectural development. Somewhere 
about midway between the two capitals, a humble popula- 
tion seemed to predominate, dwelling in cottages of the most 
simple and rustic character, with roofs often thatched and 
always steep. Through these the light was admitted by 
little horizontal elliptical port-holes for windows, seeming to 
have been punched through the roof and then to have been 
pryed a little wider, and looking like eyes in the roof — 
two being the usual number. As we approached nearer to 
Dresden this rounded form gave place to two narrow panes 
of glass arranged horizontally. Soon four arranged in a 
square made their appearance, and at last a triangular top 
with a roof completed the regular dormer window of higher 
civilization, and more architectural perfection. So the trunk 
of the tree became a column — so the basket of acanthus be- 
came the Corinthian capital — so the arches of the interla- 
cing branches of the grove of lofty elms suggested the sharp 



356 COLOKS OF THE HOUSES. 

Gothic arches, and the sounding aisles of the dim wood — 
God's first temples — were developed by art, and taste, and 
genius into the columns, and canopies, and groined vaults? 
and spacious aisles of the lofty cathedral. 

The houses of the middling sort are painted in two and 
sometimes more colors — red and white, and maroon and 
blue, &c, being used on different portions of the same build- 
ing. The frame timbers of the house are visible externally. 
The outside boards — the clap-boards or other siding — do not 
cross or cover the timbers, which are more numerous and light- 
er and differently arranged than they are with us — and the 
people seemed to be proud of the timbers, for they are osten- 
tatiously painted in some strong and striking color, quite 
different from the adjacent boards, so as to be visible at a 
considerable distance. We noticed in one locality, that 
not only the houses and out-houses, but the fences and 
bridges were painted and pied quite ostentatiously, in two of 
these colors, and by a sudden transition two other colors 
were quite as ostentatiously displayed, and on inquiring we 
were told that the line of transition was the boundary line 
between Austria and Saxony, and that the colors on the 
different sides of the line were respectively the national 
colors of those kingdoms. 



SAXONY DRESDEN LEIPSIC. 

The interesting and peculiar region known as the " Sax- 
on Switzerland," lies between the Bohemian frontier and 
Dresden, reaching to within eight or ten miles of that city. 
Our journey lay through it, along the valley of the Elbe, on 
both sides of which are cliffs of sandstone stretching in vari- 
ous directions, and of huge cyclopean, columnar structure — 
sometimes rising up like the wall of some immense castle — 
sometimes like a colonnade of lofty pillars — sometimes a 
bridge of this rock still unites two or more of these columns 
like a great entablature — sometimes a single column stands 
like a column of triumph. Often the appearance is that of 
a vast and wide-spread ruin of castles and towers — here a 
pyramid and there an inverted pyramid, and, strangely, two 
truncated pyramids seemed to stand with the truncated apex 
of the one, resting upon that of the other — now apparently 
a long wall of hewn stone and now another of hoary brick — 
and all of this the work of disintegration of the rocky cliffs — 
except that here and there a real castle or fortress, centuries 
old, mingles its real ruins with these imaginary ones, and 
is in singular keeping and harmony with them. 



358 SAXON SWITZERLAND. 

The Elbe is here navigable, and the river, with little 
double-headed sailcraft fifty to seventy-five feet long, and 
eight to ten wide, most agreeably diversifies this singular 
view, which reaches some thirty to forty miles. A large 
portion of the Saxon Switzerland is inaccessible except dh 
foot, and we therefore contented ourselves with what was 
visible from the higher points of our route. Perhaps the 
most interesting portion — certainly the most interesting of 
what we saw — was the Bastei or Bastian, which rises ab- 
ruptly from the Elbe. I shall copy from Murray a brief de- 
scription of a view which is obtained only by wearisome and 
dangerous climbing, that we would not undertake. " The 
Bastei, from which is obtained by far the finest views in the 
whole district, is the name given to one of the largest mas- 
ses of rock which rise close to the river, on the right bank. 
One narrow block on the very summit, projects into the air. 
Perched on this you can view a prospect which, in its kind, 
is unique in Europe. You hover on the pinnacle, at an ele- 
vation of more than six hundred feet above the Elbe, which 
sweeps around the bottom of the precipice. Behind, and 
up along the winding river, on the same bank, rise similar 
precipitous cliffs, cut and intersected, like those already de- 
scribed. From the farther bank the plain gradually ele- 
vates itself into a regular amphitheatre, terminated by a 
lofty but rounded range of mountains. The striking feature 
is, that, in the bottom of this amphitheatre — a plain of the 
most varied beauty — huge columnar hills start up at once 
from the ground, at a great distance from each other, over- 
looking in lonely and solemn grandeur, each its own portion 
of the domain. They are monuments which the Elbe has 
left standing, to commemorate his triumph over their less 
hardy kindred. The most remarkable among them are the 
Zilienstein and Konigstein, which tower, nearly in the 
centre of the picture, to a height of about nine hundred feet 



DRESDEN. 359 

above the level of the Elbe. These stiff bare rocks, rising 
from the earth, though now disjoined, show that they once 
formed one body, all the softer parts of which have mould- 
ered away and left the naked, indestructible frame-work. 
Behind, and at one-side of the Bastei, numerous gigantic 
pinnacles of rock, separated from the main body by rents 
and chasms of tremendous depth, shoot upward to a great 
height in every variety of fantastic forms. So slight and 
slender are these natural pillars and obelisks that it is diffi- 
cult to understand how they maintain themselves upright at 
a height of several hundred feet. A band of robber-knights, 
hundreds of years ago, set up a nest-like castle upon some of 
the loftiest and most inaccessible of them. The entrance 
on one side was through a natural arch and over a draw- 
bridge — the approach on the other was through a cleft three 
feet wide, and was closed by a port-cullis formed of a slab 
of the stone which ran in grooves in the rocky walls. The 
narrow planks with which they bridged the chasms around 
them were easily drawn in when danger threatened, and 
rendered their place impregnable — and from this lofty look- 
out they watched the approach of vessels, and dashed down 
for pillage. It was destroyed four hundred years ago." 

At Pirna, twelve miles from Dresden, the cliffs and hills 
retire and give place to a rich and diversified middle-distance, 
through which we enter Dresden, the beautiful Florence of 
Germany, as it has been called. For the last twenty miles 
our route has been through localities made famous by the 
military manoeuvres and occupations of those great armies 
that in 1813 desolated this portion of Germany. The King 
of Saxony was then an ally of Napoleon, and Dresden was 
the head-quarters of that great Captain while it was invest- 
ed by the allied forces. How in our early days our minds were 
stirred with the news of those great Napoleonic battles and 
strategetic movements ! Now nothing of them is left but 



860 GENERAL MOREAU. 

their memory. The arts of peace now enjoy their quiet and 
useful triumphs where blood and carnage clothed the ground 
in crimson forty-five years ago. A striking monument of 
those military glories and transitions is the monument to 
General Moreau, a little distance across the plain to the 
southward of the city. An early rival of Napoleon — one 
of his greatest rivals in military ability — his rivalry perhaps 
ran into unworthy jealousy — and counterplots and intrigues 
not quite consistent with patriotism, may have been the con- 
sequences. He was condemned by a military tribunal and 
his punishment commuted for banishment — kindly called 
travelling abroad. He came to our country and purchased 
an estate — but his restless ambition was not content, and in 
1813, at the request of the Emperor Alexander, he accept- 
ed a command under him and near his person, in the allied 
forces then investing Dresden. He arrived on the 29th of 
August, and received the welcome of the three sovereigns of 
Austria, Russia, and Prussia, then combined against France. 
That very evening, in the midst of flying balls and falling 
bombs, he reconnoitred the hostile columns of France, with 
a rashness that seemed to give to his bravery a hot and 
heedless zeal, and to indicate that strong and conflicting 
emotions occupied his breast. The next day he continued 
the same fearless course, and reported from time to time 
to Alexander. "While thus conversing with the Emperor, 
a cannon shot from the city, two thousand yards distant, 
shattered his right knee, passed through his horse, and 
carried away the calf of his left leg. Amputation was 
immediately necessary. For a brief period hopes were en- 
tertained for his life* but in the night of September 1st, his 
mind began to wander and to manifest his ruling passion — 
incoherently and continually he sounded his repeater and 
called his aid-de-camp. Toward morning, in a lucid inter- 
val — the morning often brings back also the inner light — he 



HIS MONUMENT. 361 

began to dictate a letter to his new master Alexander — the 
thirtieth word had but passed his lips and he was dead. 

His amputated limbs were buried at Dresden, but his 
body was interred with the honors of a Russian marshal, at 
St. Petersburgh. A pile of rough pieces of granite, sur- 
mounted by a simple four feet cubic die of polished rose 
granite, on which lie the warrior's sword and helmet, and 
the hero's crown of laurel, in bronze, marks the place where 
he fell, and bears the inscription in German — " Moreau, the 
hero, fell here on the 27th August, 1813, by the side of 
Alexander." 

Napoleon considered it a happy omen, that an almost 
spent ball should have so soon struck down one who seemed 
a renegade, but from that 27th August the tide of Napo- 
leon's success continued to ebb — and while doubts have 
always been admitted as to the real and ultimate purposes of 
Moreau, I think all must agree with the French writer who 
says that the fatal ball was fortunate for his fame, and a 
just retribution for the mere beginnings of his new career. 
It is, however, possible to suppose that Moreau, during the 
years of his exile, while he had been a mere looker-on of 
the wonderful game that his great rival was playing — like 
other careful spectators of a game in which they are not 
engaged — saw with that eye of greatness, which sees sooner 
than the actors, the result of combinations converging to dis- 
aster, and believed that the cause of the allies was the cause 
of France. 

When we entered Dresden, it was in the midst of one of 
those great fairs, so common in Germany. The city is 
thronged with dealers and buyers, as well as sellers, from 
without, bringing here their manufactures and merchandise 
to sell — and everywhere the products of the useful arts from 
far and near, filled every vacant space and corner, and occupied 
every spare room — stalls everywhere, in the streets and in 

16 



362 FAIR AT DRESDEN. 

the public squares — everywhere a crowd — every person you 
met had something in hand, which had just been purchased 
at one place, and he seemed to be hurrying on to buy some- 
thing else at another. There was everything, from child's 
toys at a penny a dozen to fine woolen and cotton goods, 
Bohemian glass, ready-made clothing, prints, pictures, fine 
china, coarse pottery, beautiful hardware, etc., etc., in end- 
less variety, and in lavish profusion, while the proper shops 
of ihe city wee filled more abundantly and dressed more 
showily to attract strangers. The fair usually lasts about 
two days, and occurs two or three times a year in each 
city. When it is finished, the merchant or manufacturer 
puts up his unsold goods and starts for another fair in 
another city, and so keeps on — replenishing his stock, and 
selling year in and year out. 

How this present Dresden contrasts with Dresden the 
seat of war, and the headquarters of the great man of blood, 
and surrounded by hostile armies ! Heavy booming cannon 

*' And the rockets' red glare, and bombs bursting in air," 

clothed it night and day in solemn sublimity. In the in- 
vested city, famine, disease, and pestilence, swelled the num- 
bers of the dying, and two hundred to three hundred corpses 
a day from the military hospitals, showed how death was 
decimating the army, while an equal number weekly, swelled 
the bills of mortality of the citizens. It was to sustain the 
French empire that Saxony, a large and prosperous king- 
dom, consented to be the theatre of the great and bloody 
battles of 1813 — at Leipsic. at Leutzen, and at Dresden — 
which in their rapid consequences sent Napoleon to Elba, 
and made the King of Saxony prisoner, and stripped him of 
all his conquests and half his kingdom proper. When he 
was permitted to return to his humble throne and his dimin- 
ished kingdom, with a wisdom that misfortune does not 



SAXONY SINCE THE AVAR. 363 

always bring, he devoted himself to paying his debts, and 
relieving his kingdom from the consequences of the war, and 
to adding to its strength, and honor, and resources, by im- 
provements in the education of the people — with what suc- 
cess may in part be seen by the following statistics, taken 
from Barnard — " With a population of one million eight 
hundred and nine thousand and twenty-three, in 1846, there 
was one university, with eighty-five professors and eight 
hundred and thirty -five students — six academies of the arts 
and mining, with forty-three professors and teachers, and 
fourteen hundred pupils — eleven gymnasia — colleges — 
with one hundred and thirty-one teachers, and one thou- 
sand five hundred pupils — six higher real schools, with 
eighteen teachers, and two hundred and seventy pupils — 
three special institutions for commerce and military affairs, 
with forty-three teachers, and two hundred and forty 
pupils — nine teachers' seminaries, with forty-one teachers, 
and three hundred and sixty-two pupils — seventeen higher 
schools of industry, or technical schools, with seventy-two 
teachers and seven hundred and seventy-nine pupils — sixty- 
nine lower technical schools, with six thousand nine hundred 
and sixty-six pupils — twenty-four schools for lace-making, 
with thirty-seven teachers, and one thousand nine hundred 
and twenty-eight pupils — two thousand one hundred and 
fifty-five common schools, with two thousand one hundred 
and ninety-five teachers, and two hundred and seventy-eight 
thousand and twenty-three pupils — one institution for the 
blind — one for mutes, and three orphan asylums, besides in- 
fant schools and private seminaries." And Saxony is stronger 
^o-day, in all the elements of national worth, than ever 
before. In this connection, it is proper to advert to the 
fact that Saxony is a Protestant kingdom — strongly and 
uniformly so ever since the reformation — but ever since 1697 
the King and royal family have been Roman Catholics — the 



364 SITUATION CP DRESDEN. 

king at that time having changed his religion to ohtain the 
crown of Poland. The price of their apostacy has been 
lost to them, but they are faithful to their adopted religion, 
and in all that immediately concerns the honor find prosper- 
ity of the country, the king, the estates, and the people, 
are as harmonious as they could be if all of the same faith. 
Dresden — Dresda — is in some respects a beautiful city. 
Its streets are wide, its houses lofty, and its public edifices 
noble — but its only resemblance to Florence, that I could 
perceive, is that it is on both sides of a river, and has ex- 
ceedingly interesting and remarkable collections of nature 
and art. The Elbe sweeps through the city in a fine curve, 
and is crossed by two fine bridges — the new railroad bridge, 
with carriage-way and sidewalks, and the old massive stone 
bridge, which was originally built with funds raised by the 
sale of papal indulgences, or dispensations from eating but- 
ter and eggs in Lent. It has fine sidewalks, which command 
exceedingly good views of the whole city, on both sides of 
the river. Situated in latitude fifty-one degrees — four de- 
grees further north than Quebec — it of course suffers the 
rigors of a long winter, and the snow of the mountains 
through which the Elbe winds it course, when melted by 
sudden thaws, swells the river to an almost resistless torrent. 
It rises sometimes sixteen feet in tAventy-four hours. A 
bridge built to withstand the ice and water of such floods 
must needs be of such solidity and strength as to make it in- 
teresting and respectable. From the bridge, by broad steps, 
you reach the Terrace of Bruhl on the old-town bank of the 
river — a place of great resort for promenades, and lounges, 
and refreshments, and music in the cafes, and halting 
places along shore, all commanding good views of the river, 
the bridges and the opposite bank. These and the other 
similar places of resort are thronged by the citizens in the 
fine summer evenings, and also by the many strangers who 



COLLECTIONS AND MUSEUMS. 365 

make Dresden a summer residence for a longer or snorter 
period. 

The galleries and collections are the great attractions. Its 
picture galleries are the finest collections of paintings in Ger- 
many, it is said — in the principal gallery there are one 
thousand live hundred paintings. They certainly contain 
some of the greatest pictures by the greatest masters, and 
there are specimens of most of the great masters. There is 
a collection of two hundred and fifty thousand engravings, 
one thousand of which are framed. There are fifty portfolios 
of drawings by the old masters. There is a gallery of four 
hundred and fifty portraits of eminent men, of great merit in 
that line of art. Frederick the Great, while he battered 
the churches, gave special orders to spare the galleries — 
Napoleon did not steal works of art from Dresden. The 
celebrated Green Vault is the most remarkable collection of 
its kind in the world — being made up principally of precious 
curiosities in bronze, in ivory, mosaics, porcelain, enamel, 
gold and silver vessels, goblets and other vessels cut out of 
agates, and other half precious stones — sapphires, emeralds, 
and rubies, and pearls, and diamonds of astonishing number 
and value. This collection is estimated to be of the value 
of many millions. It has been collected by the sovereigns of 
Saxony during the last one hundred and fifty years or more, 
apparently without regard to expense. The Historical Mu- 
seum is exceedingly rich in armor and arms of the greatest 
interest and value, and the Museum of Natural History is 
good, but strongest in the minerals of Saxony. The 
Museum of Antiquities, the library of four hundred thou- 
sand volumes, the collection of porcelains and terra cottas, in 
the Japanese palace, are interesting. 

There are two churches which are worth looking at. 
The Catholic church in which the royal family worship, if 
it was not the Court church would not attract much notice. 



36G leipsic. 

It is connected with the royal palace by a covered bridge or 
passage over the intervening street. To us the Fraueukir- 
che — the Church of Oar Lady — was much more interesting. 
It is the Protestant cathedral— Lutheran. It is built of 
stone from the foundation to the dome, and is so solid 
in its construction that when bombarded by Frederick the 
Great, shot and shell rebounded from the walls and the 
dome, and did no injury. Within it is fitted up like a 
theatre with four tiers of seats or galleries. The first tier 
consists of private boxes, the others are common rows of 
seats for a promiscuous audience. The seats in the body of 
the church are for ladies, each having her own seat with her 
name and number. On the right of the desk, on the front 
of the lower tier or gallery, hangs a portrait of Luther, of 
life size, and on the left, one of Melancthon. 

From Dresden to Berlin, the country is flat and uninterest- 
ing — r sandy, piney, and unproductive, abounding in wind- 
mills, often placed in a cluster — and when all are going at 
once, the effect is singular. We had hoped that when Ave 
got into the Protestant countries we should find less of the 
hard out-door tillage and drudgery done by women, but the 
fields are still tilled by them, while the men seem to be quite 
out of sight. 

Great events have made Leipsic — Lipsia — immortal in 
history, although some of its importance has been lost since 
the Kingdom of Saxony was so greatly reduced in size in 
consequence of the King having adhered to Napoleon. 

The city has now about seventy-five thousand people, and 
some two thousand houses, showing an average of thirty to 
forty persons in a house, a populousness which is characteristic 
of many of these old continental cities. It is about eight hun- 
dred years old, and has, almost all that time, been famous. 
Situated on the great highways which unite France and 
Turkey and Russia and Italy, its importance has always 



BATTLE OF THE NATIONS. 367 

been acknowledged, and its possession has always been an ob- 
ject of great importance in the great wars which have ravaged 
Europe. Its great fairs and markets have made it celebra- 
ted in the history of commerce and manufactures. There 
are three of these fairs annually, and sometimes the stran- 
gers, there to attend the fair, out-number the resident popu- 
lation, and the business of the year has amounted to eight 
millions of dollars. The book fair, once a year, has no 
equal in the world. 

I remember well, as you and I — in our boyhood — read the 
first news of the battle of Leipsic, how we wished we could 
have been on the tower in the city, and looked out upon 
that sublime and bloody field, as the battle raged from the 
15th to the 19th of October, 1813. It was from that tower 
that the narrator had watched the scene. So with almost 
the same boyish curiosity — so many years later — I went to 
the tower. I could look out upon the fertile and smiling 
plains and villages scattered here and there, and the lazy 
streams that glistened in the sun. That plain, verdant in a 
northern summer, I could easily change to the dun and 
quaker landscape of sombre October. I could take the 
charts and make out the positions of the great captains who 
were manoeuvring to decide one of the greatest issues — per- 
haps the greatest — that ever depended upon ball and bay- 
onet. I could place the three hundred thousand men of the 
allies, and the one hundred and seventy thousand of Napo- 
leon — but I seemed to be fully conscious of my inability 
even to imagine the thunder of the captains and the shout- 
ing — and the smoke, and the fire, and the thunder of lines of 
two hundred heavy cannon at once, such as the oldest veter- 
ans had never before heard — and those desperate charges of 
thousands of cavalry, led by Kellerman and Murat — and the 
columns of the bayonet-charge, so solid and so solemn in their 
tread — fit image of the march of fate. From nine in the 



368 THE RETREAT. 

morning till night-fall those columns fought, all the live-long 
day — and the dead, and the dying, and the disabled, the 
horse and his rider, lay on the bloody ground through the 
silent and solemn night. The next day — from sheer 
necessity — both armies reposed through a cold, rainy, autum- 
nal day. On the 18th, at eight o'clock in the morning, the 
two armies were again in motion, and another day — till 
darkness shut down upon the field — was devoted to the 
thundering shocks of those great masses of men of superhu- 
man bravery, each fighting in desperation, as it were, for his 
own dear life, and as if conscious of the great political con- 
sequences which hung upon the issue. 

During the night Napoleon saw that ruin or retreat was 
his only alternative, and he accordingly ordered a retreat, 
covered by Poniatowski and Macdonald. Slowly — during 
the night — the retreat went on. In the morning it contin- 
ued through the city. Napoleon gave orders to have the 
only bridge across the river blown up on a signal, to prevent 
pui-suit. He bade good-bye to his ally — the King of Saxony 
— at his lodgings in the city, and crossed the bridge. Soon 
after, by mistake, the bridge was blown up, too soon. The 
news of this mishap ran back along the retreating thousands, 
and the wildness of panic seized them, and the little city, its 
streets and squares presented an awful scene of confusion 
and fright as the army rushed along. They reached the 
river, plunged in and endeavored to reach the other bank, 
but were swept away, and twenty thousand were drowned. 
Macdonald and Poniatowski threw up a temporary bridge 
which proved too weak, and, while Macdonald was saved, the 
brave Prince — the last of the Poles — was precipitated into 
the stream. The charger that had borne him so proudly in the 
battle, now — weary and worn by the fatigues of the day, and 
disheartened, perhaps, by the chagrin of defeat — had not 
strength enough to carry his noble master across the stream, 



BATTLES OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 369 

and they sank together and were drowned. A monument in 
a public garden now marks the spot. 

With Napoleon, his Russian campaign was the beginning 
of the end. His successes after this were but the occasion- 
ally crested waves of a continually ebbing tide. His first 
great challenge to fate, after his return from Moscow, was 
decided also on the plains of Leipsic, in the great battle of 
May 2d, 1813. It was fit that he should call it a victory, 
because it was not a defeat. It was, at best, a draAvn battle. 
The allies took courage from it and hemmed him in for the 
sublime days of October. October 19 he fled from Leipsic, 
after losing the " Battle of the Nations." On the 4th of the 
next May he entered the Island of Elba, a prisoner. What 
a fall from what a height ! What a twelvemonth of history ! 
But the battles of 1813 are not the only great days of Leipsic 
— for Breitenfield and Lutzen, as well as Grossgorschen, are 
all in the plains of Leipsic — and the battles of 1631, 1632, 
and 1642, were in their day quite as important as those 
which have succeeded them. The thirty-years' war — the 
great conflict in which the Koman Catholic powers endeav- 
ored, for a generation, to suppress by force of arms the 
growing principles of Protestantism, was really decided here. 
In 1631 — at the village of Breitenfield — the Catholic forces 
under Tilly and Pappenheim were totally routed by the 
Lion of the North, Gustavus Adolphus, the immortal King 
of Sweden. This victory really settled the question, but the 
next year Pappenheim, and Wallenstein the great Bohe- 
mian, invaded Saxony with forty thousand men to bring the 
question again to an i?sue. This brought the great Swede 
again to the field with twenty-five thousand men and one 
hundred cannon, with Marshal Kniphausen and the Duke 
of Weimar as his generals of division. The battle raged 
with a fierceness characteristic of religious strife and of such 
great captains fighting the battles of the Lord. In the 

10* 



370 UNIVERSITY OF LEIPSIC. 

midst of the fight — when the fate of the day was yet unde- 
cided — Gustavus Adolphus was killed. ■ This would proba- 
bly have lost the battle to the Protestants, had not the Duke 
of Weimar, with great address, caused the report to be 
spread that he had fallen into the hands of the enemy. This 
roused his Swedes to a bravery which nothing could with- 
stand and which gained the day. Wallenstein on his return 
to Prague with his Bohemian army, after the battle, caused 
a large number of his officers to be tried for cowardice at this 
battle. They were condemned to death. Eleven nobles had 
the poor choice of the sword or the gallows. The many of 
inferior quality were hung and then beheaded with the axe. 
In 1642 at Breitenfield, the Swedes under Torstensen again 
defeated the imperial forces under Piccolomini. 

At the time of the breaking up in the University of 
Prague, a portion of the seceders established the University 
of Leipsic, which, after that of Prague, is the oldest ia Ger- 
many. It was formed in 1409, and has now eight hundred 
to one thousand students, and about one hundred professors, 
besides a large number of private teachers. The private teach- 
ers, I believe, are a characteristic feature of the European Uni- 
versity. The endowment of the university and the annual 
appropriations of the state are applied to keeping up the ap- 
pointed and routine-teaching of the curriculum by the pro- 
fessors. This gives to the professors a small stipend, and 
they look for further income to extraordinary lectures, given 
for pay, to those more ambitious and industrious students, 
who desire to push their inquiries far beyond the mere rou- 
tine of the university course. Such students also resort to 
able and learned men, who, in the character of private 
teachers, render their service for hire to such as desire to 
employ them, and also deliver lectures on their own special- 
ty. From this class the corps of professors is often recruit- 



THE ATJGUSTEUM. 371 

ed. It seems to me that these arrangements are almost the 
perfection of a system of university instruction. 

The teaching rooms are of exceeding plainness — rude al- 
most as a country school-house — the seats in some instances 
ranged round the room — in some cases the simplest long 
benches and desks of plain boards with holes for the ink- 
stands, in front of the teacher's desk, which is quite as 
plain, on one side of the room. Some of the rooms have 
seats for not more than twenty-five, others for one hundred 
and fifty. They open from long corridors. The buildings, 
in external appearance, have little to interest the traveller. 
Modern reparations and re-constructions have deprived them 
of the venerable, ancient look which their years would sug- 
gest. In one, is a common hall, or convictorium, for two 
hundred and forty students, where, on certain foundations, 
they are fed gratuitously. 

The Augusteum is a modern building, and has much more 
pretension. Within, it is full of interest, being really one of 
the pleasant sights of the city. It was built in 1836, and 
finished from designs by Schinkel. It contains, besides the 
library of one hundred thousand volumes, and some other 
collections, a large and beautiful hall, in which the degrees 
are conferred, and all the grand ceremonies and receptions 
of the university take place. The door-way is ornamented 
with statues of Calliope and Polyhymnia. The frontispiece 
represents the four faculties of the university. It contains 
some fine statues, and in front of the President's seat is a 
noble bust of Liebnitz, who was a native of Leipsic and 
educated here, principally — but being denied his degree, LL. 
D., on account of his youth — twenty years old — he took it 
from the university of Altorf. His fame is, however, a great 
glory of his native city, and his bust well deserves the 
place it occupies. Under the lofty cornices of the hall are 



372 CHURCHES CEMETERY. 

bas-reliefs of life-size and full length, illustrating the prog- 
ress of education. 

The observatory and the chemical laboratory of the univer- 
sity are in the citadel of Pleissenberg, from which we looked 
out upon the battle grounds. * 

The churches of Leipsic are not very interesting. The 
only Catholic church is a neat modern specimen of the Goth- 
ic — it has four chapels or altars, but lacks, of course, the 
works of art which abound in the great temples of the 
Catholic cities. The Protestant churches are large and 
ancient, and have some things worth looking at. St. 
Thomas' is the largest and oldest — about four hundred and 
sixty years old. St. Nicholas — three hundred and thirty 
years old, has a beautiful interior, and some good paintings. 
This church was in existence in the thirteenth century, but 
has been rebuilt. We were told it would seat five thousand 
persons — I should not have supposed so many. In an out- 
of-the-way and half-sunken room, we were shown a beauti- 
ful Gothic stone pulpit and baptistry, said to have been often 
used by Luther. I did not think any better of the Luther- 
ans of Saxony, that such a beautiful relic, so closely asso- 
ciated with the great reformer and his ministerial functions, 
should thus be shoved into a dark corner. St. Paul's, be- 
longing to the university, is interesting principally for the 
tombs of distinguished men. 

The cemetery is an interesting one. It is old, and has the 
graves and monuments of many honored men. Denkstein — 
German for grave-stone — think-stone — seems to me a very 
suggestive and beautiful name. And they have modes here, 
which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere. The mar- 
ble stones do not, as with us, stand erect, planted in the 
ground, or lie horizontal. They lie at an angle of some 
twenty degrees, with the one end resting upon a support at 
the head, the other rests upon the earth at the foot. These 



auerbach's wine-cellar. 373 

are the simpler grave-stones. There are many others of 
the usual sepulchral forms — old graves, moss-covered and 
solemn — newer ones, fresh and ostentatious — almosi; all 
the new modern graves covered with evergreens and flowers 
and turfs — wreaths of flowers freshly hung upon the stones, 
and scattered upon the turf, showed the still open sorrow — 
but mellowed and softened by time, the great soother. While 
we were there three ladies in mourning came and strewed 
fresh flowers on a grave two years old — about the older ones 
the planted and waving flowers, and the trimmed and tend- 
ed evergreens, showed the hereditary grief which made the 
monument a Denkstein indeed, from generation to generation. 
I saw there, however, what jarred harshly with our Ameri- 
can tastes — women with Avheel-barrows were wheeling 
through the alleys of the cemetery, heavy loads of turf, sus- 
tained by broad straps over their shoulders, and doing the la- 
bor of the cemetery. So, as I passed through the old, civil- 
ized, cultivated, literary Leipsic, I saw a woman bowed 
down over the sawbuck sawing the wood, while a man sat at 
his ease, splitting it as it fell from her saw. 

Auerbach's wine-cellar fronts on the market-place, oppo- 
site the end of the quaint and venerable old City Hall. We 
stepped down into it and took a glass of selzer water, cool, 
foamy and refreshing — seated for the moment at a table, 
the same table at which Goethe and his crony fellow-stu- 
dents are said to have caroused in his youthful student days, 
and which his genius has raised to immortality in the first 
characteristic scene of Faust and Mephistophiles, in his 
great dramatic allegory of Faust. Their first experience 
was in Auerbach's wine-cellar, where Mephistophiles exhib- 
its his powers to the bacchanals who are revelling there. — 
lie offers them their choice of finer wines than they are 
drinking, and he bores gimlet-holes through the spread leaf 
of the common-wood table, about which they are carousing, 



374 auerbach's wixe-cellar. 

and draws for each the wine of his choice, Rhenish, Cham- 
pagne, Tokay — they, astonished at this diablerie, spill some 
of the wine on the floor. It turns to flame, and in the midst 
of their bewilderment and rage Mephistophiles and Faust 
leave the cellar. There are rude drawings on the walls — * 
the table is there — diablerie and magic are gone — it is only 
a plain drinking-cellar in the market-place — but the magic 
of genius has written the names of Goethe and Faust on that 
humble caveau, in letters that will not soon be obliterated, 
and travellers perhaps all along down the ages will drop in 
there as we did, and in the gratification of mere curiosity 
keep it fresh as a monumental honor to the great poet. 

Had I not desired to make some small purchases in the 
middle of the day I should not have observed the singular 
custom which seems to prevail of shutting the shops during 
the usual dinner hour, so that master and servant, principal 
and clerk, may all take their dinner at the same time. — ■ 
Their shops are fine, showy, and well supplied, but small. 



PRUSSIA BERLIN. 

BERLIN, Berlinum, the capital of Prussia, is a large, 
beautiful, and interesting city. It is a striking instance 
of what a royal residence and a court will do for a town, 
otherwise destined to insignificance. In the midst of a 
sandy and desolate plain, so level that the surface water will 
not run off, and incapable of proper sewerage, in high lati- 
tude, above 52°, no fertile fields about it, and no maritime 
commerce, it has still grown to be a city of little less than 
five hundred thousand people, and bears the evidence of ac- 
tive and increasing prosperity. In one hundred and fifty 
years it has increased from forty thousand to four hundred 
and fifty thousand. The houses are not high, and the streets 
are wide, so that the city covers a very large space in pro- 
portion to its population. Its circumference is about twelve 
miles. Our first impression of it was exceedingly favorable, 
for we Avere set down at our hotel in the grand street of 
Berlin, and in the neighborhood of the palaces and other 
public buildings. This street is very wide — I should say 
two hundred feet — planted all along the middle with rows of 



376 BERLIN UNTER DER LINDEN. 

beautiful lime trees, on each side of which is a public car- 
riage-way. It is called by the beautiful name Unter der 
Linden — under the lime trees- 1 — from the groves of limes under 
which the people enjoy the delightful walks. It is a place 
of great resort— on it are the Academy of Fine Arts,. 
opera-houses, guard-house, arsenal, the library and several 
palaces, and most of the' gi*eat hotels. At one end it termin- 
ates in front of the Royal Palace, at the other it is crossed 
by the celebrated Brandenburg gate, one hundred and ninety- 
five feet wide, surmounted by the Quadriga of Victory, so 
justly admired as an embodiment of the idea of victory — so 
life-like, spirited, noble, buoyant and glorious, that you al- 
most seem to hear the thunder of the captains and the shout- 
ing, the earthquake voice of victory, and the neighing of the 
steeds, and to see their prancing. It was taken by Napoleon, 
in the time of his triumphs and carried to Paris, but restor- 
ed to its place here, in the days of his humiliation. Beyond 
the gate, the broad road to Charlottenburg stretches on three 
miles, forming with the Unter der Linden a straight line — at 
the other end the magnificent and solid royal palace, stand- 
ing diagonally across the street, shuts in the view. 

In the street opposite the Academy of Fine Arts, is the 
colossal equestrian statue of Frederick the Great, said to be 
the greatest and most worthy monument in Europe. Its 
granite pedestal is twenty-five feet high, and on its sides are 
commemorated in sculpture, one hundred and twenty-seven 
heroes and statesmen — celebrities of the times of the great 
royal captain — thirty-one, by life-sized sculptured portraits, 
and the residue, by inscriptions. There are beautiful alle- 
gorical figures — Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temper- 
ance — to represent the striking characteristics of Frederick, 
and bas-reliefs, representing him in various well-known 
scenes of his individual as well as his royal life. Above all 
this, on the granite pedestal, is the statue, seventeen feet high. 



STATUE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. 377 

It is Frederick himself — the greatest monarch of the eigh- 
teenth century — with his three-cornered hat, his queue, and 
his stick — all true to life — no naked neck — no shirtless body 
— no helmet and shield — no toga — no folds of Roman drap- 
ery to disfigure the great modern soldier — but clad as he 
lived — and looking as when he led his columns to the victories 
of modern warfare. Thanks to Rauch, and every great artist, 
that gives us Gothic truth and Teutonic force instead of the 
feeble and borrowed imitations of the classic periods. Who 
knows but it may yet come to be believed, that the secret of 
the admiration of the great artists of old — the hiding of 
their power — was their marvellous truth to the scenes, 
the costumes, the faiths, and even the follies of their own 
times. 

There are other statues in bronze and marble, in the fine 
public squares and places about the city, which show that 
Prussia has not been unmindful of the great men to whom 
she is indebted for much of her historical and military glory. 
This open-air, visible history — this union of art and history 
in the public streets — is a great cultivator of the people. Just 
commemoration is a great virtue in a nation, and a great 
economy. 

The Museum of Historical Collections is a place one may 
look through with interest. While there is much which a 
stranger would not care to look at, there is also much that 
must be exceedingly attractive to Germans — Relics, trophies, 
and mementoes of their historical progress, and of the great 
men of the kingdom of Prussia, as well as of others famous 
in European history — Royal and princely dresses — stars and 
garters, and orders, and decorations of historical interest. 
After the battle of Waterloo, the Prussians took the car- 
riage of Napoleon — from which he had fled, leaving all the 
orders presented to' him by the various sovereigns of Europe 
— England alone excepted. They are all here in a glass 



378 MUSEUM LIBRARY. 

case. Blucher's orders are here also near by. A fantastic 
dress of the brave fop Murat, is exceedingly characteristic 
of his jaunty and flashy taste. There are two swords, famous 
only for the number of distinguished heads they have cut off 
on the executioner's block — some striking casts in wax, in-' 
eluding the face of General Moreau, taken after death, and 
one of Frederick the Great, taken also after death. There is 
also a wax figure of the rusty and miserly old hero, of life- 
size, dressed as he was in life — his flute, and books, and cane, 
&c, about him. We saw there two cannon balls, each 
flattened on one side, said to have been fired by opposing 
armies at Magdeburg, and to have met point-blank in the 
air and to have fallen together, thus flattened — the drinking 
cup of Baron Trenck, engraved by him while in prison at 
Magdeburg — a beer mug of Luther's, of so large capacity as 
to justify the belief that the great reformer was as fond of 
beer as modern Germans are. 

The Royal Library contains five hundred thousand vol- 
umes, and five thousand manuscripts, and has many curiosi- 
ties in the way of books, manuscripts, &c, among them 
Guttenberg's Bible, being the first book in which moveable 
types were used — thirty-six volumes of engraved portraits of 
distinguished men of all times and countries, with their 
autographs. Here are kept the two hemispheres with which 
Otto Guericke experimented upon the air, in discovering the 
air pump. 

The Museum is one of the great attractions of Berlin. 
Its collections of paintings, and sculptures, and antiquities is 
very remarkable and every way worthy of a great, flourishing, 
and famous kingdom. Such great national museums, establish- 
ed and kept up by the government are, in my judgment, among 
the most interesting and useful surroundings of a great me- 
tropolis. In these great national collections, profound science, 
high art, historical and antiquarian learning, unite with 



PICTURE GALLERY. 379 

natural history in gratifying the curiosity of cultivated 
minds, and in adding to the stock of useful knowledge the 
practical teachings of all ages and countries, in one great 
school. I have nowhere been so much struck with this as 
in this vast museum. 

You see as you are about to enter it the great vase of 
polished granite, which stands upon the left of the entrance. 
It is twenty-two feet in diameter — made from an enormous 
boulder brought from about thirty miles distant, and cut and 
polished here by steam power. On the right of the steps is 
the original of the mounted Amazon attacked by a tiger, by 
Kiss, of which copies are now so common. The grand col- 
onnades of the "front are frescoed in myths and allegories in 
the highest style of modern art, by Cornelius and Schinkel, 
and within the walls everything is on a scale of great afflu 
ence — a collection of sixteen hundred vases — gems, two 
thousand eight hundred and upward — a large collection of 
the household gods, and arms, armor, and domestic and war- 
like instruments of Rome The collection of sculptures, in 
their arrangement and in the approach to them, produces a 
striking effect, beyond the merits of the individuals works. 
The picture-gallery is exceedingly large, I should rather say, 
is exceedingly numerous, for it is divided by screens hung 
full of paintings, into a very large number of small galle- 
ries. The number of pictures I have forgotten — it is very 
great, and one is almost bewildered in moving about in 
search of the great works of the first class, in each of the 
great schools of art, according to which they are clas- 
sified. Passing on into the New Museum, we find its 
northern antiquities — Sclavonic and Teutonic — its ethnolog- 
ical collection, and its vast collection of Egyptian antiquities, 
to be of wonderful interest. Other portions of the New 
Museum are not yet finished for occupancy. When the 
whole is finished and furnished, may I be there to see. 



380 PUBLIC GARDENS. 

When shall be seen such collections in our great demo- 
cratic metropolis ? Never till the people shall learn that it 
is for their interest and for the interest of the city — in a pe- 
cuniary point of view — to say nothing of municipal pride 
and national glory — thus to collect worthy objects of attrac-* 
tion and curiosity in the great centres of popular resort. 
There can be no wiser or more economical use of a portion 
of the public funds, nor one more acceptable to the people. 

The public gardens — the winter gardens — are great coffee 
houses under glass, houses filled with choice plants and flow- 
ers — with fine dinners, choice music, and everything to make 
them agreeable, fashionable, and intelligent places of resort. 
Kroll's winter garden is the largest, and the only one we 
visited. The building contains a dining and concert hall, 
three hundred and thirty-six feet long and about one hun- 
dred wide, besides a theatre, reading-room, &c. It is in the 
great park of eight hundred and eighty acres. In the sum- 
mer time, there and in many other gardens, the people lounge 
and take their refreshments about the garden. The confec- 
tioners' shops, the restaurants and the wine and beer houses 
are also thronged places for lounging and refreshments. So- 
ciality — beer drinking, wine drinking, smoking, and music, 
are the characteristic enjoyments of the daily life of the 
Berliners. 

The gorgeousness and luxury of the Royal Palace exceed- 
ed anything of the kind which we have yet seen. Its gold and 
silver and precious stones, its rich embroideries and tapestries, 
its lofty frescoed ceilings and its furniture of untold cost, 
seemed to come up to our republican notions of what was 
to be expected in royal palaces in the proudest and richest 
empires. The palace is four hundred and sixty feet long, 
and two hundred and seventy-six in breadth. I did not find 
time to enter the university. 



Chapter %totnt%-fBixxt\* 

BAVARIA NUREMBERG — MUNICH. 

LEAVING Leipsic, we turned our faces again south, 
passing through the Duchy of Saxe Alfenburgh and 
its little capital, Altenburgh, and made our first stop at the 
quaint old town of Nuremberg, Noreniberga — old, veneiable 
and full of striking sights and interesting memories. Some of 
the guides speak of ruins and antiquities two thousand years 
old, but I believe there is no authentic record of the existence 
of the place older than about eight hundred years — but even 
then it was a considerable place, for those records are the 
grants of the rights of tolls or customs and coinage. Three 
hundred years ago it was the proudest and gayest and most re- 
nowned city in Germany. Its commerce with the east and the 
low countries, and its manufactures, gave it great wealth and 
luxury. It had risen to this eminence through long ages ot 
prosperous commerce and royal favor. Ever since A. D. 
1030, its castle has been a royal residence, and more than 
thirty Kings and Emperors have, during that time, for longer 
or shorter periods, made it a favorite resting-place, although 



382 NUREMBERG. 

it was a free city, and enjoyed its own municipal govern- 
ment — which being essentially aristocratic and patrician, 
harmonized easily with royal sympathies and imperial pro- 
tection. So long as the German Empire remained, the im- 
perial regalia and jewels were kept in Nuremberg — perhaps 
because of the great strength of its walls and fortifications, 
which have more than once withstood assaults and sieges 
which are celebrated in the annals of war. Its greatest 
strength is perhaps in its ditch of great width and depth 
surrounding the city. 

Nuremberg was in some sort the stronghold of Protest- 
antism at the time of the religious wars. Gustavus 
Adolphus, when likely to be overwhelmed by the Catholic 
troops, under Wallenstein, took shelter here and was for a 
long time besieged, till famine and consequent sickness com- 
pelled these two great captains to withdraw after an unsuc- 
cessful attempt by the Swedes to storm the camp of the 
Austrians. Ten thousand citizens and twenty thousand 
Swedes perished in the siege of a few weeks — a siege in 
which the art of war was exhausted. 

The causes which carried the trade of the east around 
the Cape of Good Hope, were the cause of the great de- 
cline of Nuremberg. Before this, however, she had expelled 
the Jews, not allowing them to sleep within the walls under 
pain of death. At a later period, when the Protestant 
weavers were driven from France and Flanders, and would 
gladly have brought their skill and industry to Nuremberg, 
the short-sighted city shut her gates against these " foreign 
immigrants," and drove them to the neighboring towns, 
Avhich were thus strengthened for a more successful rivalry. 
The Protestant faith was adopted without that iconoclastic 
fanaticism which characterized it in some other places. — 
Their churches, now Protestant, stand with their images 
and ornaments as they were when they were the temples of 



CASTLE BRIDGES. 383 

the Catholic religion, yet they would not allow a Roman 
Catholic to hold property in the city. All of these causes 
conspired to take from Nuremberg her pre-eminence, and 
she has not now half the population which she had three 
hundred years ago. Instead of her heavy and useful manu- 
factures, she devotes herself to the making of toys and of 
fanciful gimcracks, for which she is famous throughout Eu- 
rope. The town, the streets, the squares, the monuments, 
bear the record of the former prosperity of the city, and 
they bear now the evidence that she is humbled and vulgar- 
ized. Her hundred thousand people are reduced to almost 
half that number. It was said in the days of her glory, 
that any burgher of Nuremberg was better lodged than a 
King of Scotland. Her lofty houses with their deep bay- 
windows, which seem to indicate that street-sights and street- 
gazing were instincts of the people, and that luxurious lei- 
sure was the habit of all the citizens, now look time- 
worn, dilapidated, and antique, and the streets and public 
squares have hardly people enough visible to give them life. 
The castle occupies a lofty and rocky spot, from which 
the surrounding country, as well as the city itself, is brought 
distinctly in panorama. The circumjacent plains — for the 
country is low — presents a good view of the characteristic 
German landscape, through which crawls the sluggish and 
dirty river Pegnitz, which divides Nuremberg into two 
parts, united by seven bridges, one of which is built after 
the pattern of the Kialto in Venice — a single arch, of about 
one hundred feet span. It is fifty feet wide, and the arch is 
four feet thick — is two hundred and sixty years old, and is 
very noticeable, from its strength and beauty. There are 
besides the seven stone bridges, six of wood and one of 
wire. Another small stream, the Fischbach, also runs 
through a part of the city, which turns some machinery for 
the factories, and supplies the Avater for the fountains. 



384 ALBERT DURER. 

I do not know where else you can get so fine a view of so 
fine an old city of the middle ages. It is not inaptly called, 
by Murray, a sort of Pompeii of the middle ages. From 
the town and the country — from castle and tower, and spire 
and square, and monument — from feudal towers and gate*, 
with portcullis and drawbridge — from antique gates of im- 
memorial dwellings, and from chefs (Vceuvres of architecture — 
from workshops and studios — from engravings and paint- 
ings, and bronzes and marbles — and from the graves of great 
men, spring up associations and reflections, in which it is 
easy to lose oneself in dreamy musings and suggestive mem- 
ories, ranging through centuries of rise and fall. We left 
the castle, and passed again into the streets, and as we 
passed a high, dark, tower-like building, our cicerone in- 
formed us that it was the tower in which Caspar Hauser 
was kept in Nuremberg. Till this moment, I had entirely 
forgotten poor Caspar Hauser, since his death, more than 
twenty years ago, and the fact that he had ever been in this 
quaint old city of Nuremberg, now struck me as one new 
to me. The conjectures about him were innumerable, but 
they threw no light upon the mystery. There are those 
who always believed him an impostor — strange impostor, 
poor fellow! Did he grow up in ignorance, that he might 
excite compassion — did he kill himself that his imposture 
might not be discovered ! 

In the birth-place of Albert Durer, the greatest of Ger- 
man artists, we did not neglect the opportunity to look at 
such of his works as are to be found here. There was no 
extravagance in the deliberate opinion of Vasaic, that had 
Durer been a Tuscan, and had he had the opportunity of 
study at Rome, he would have been the most celebrated 
painter of Italy. I have seen nowhere clearer proof of tran- 
scendent genius, and solid greatness, than in the life and works 
of this immortal artist. Well may Nuremberg, as she does, 



HANS SACHS THE LIBRARY. 385 

honor and almost adore his memory, and well may they 
have placed a worthy statue of him, in bronze, by Rauch, 
ia the public place which bears his name — Albert Durer 
Place — and well, too, may they preserve the house in which 
he lived and painted. This house has been altered, but 
it is still the same house which was occupied by him. 
They showed us through it, from his kitchen to his painting- 
room, where he could shut himself from the tongue of 
his vixen wife, and in a world of his own creation, enjoy, 
unmolested, the images of beauty, and feeling, that, born in 
his own fancy, combined by his own imagination, were 
wrought out in solemn truth by his masterly skill. 

The Albert Durer Verein — Art Union — appears to hold 
its distribution here, for in one of the rooms, we came 
upon the two wheels for the drawing — the great wheel for 
the names, and the small wheel for the numbers — let me not 
name the profane and wicked contrivance in the hearing of 
the rigid-righteous, who could not endure the American 
Art Union, and destroyed it in the height of its unselfish 
and prosperous usefulness ! 

The house of Hans Sachs also gives his name to the street 
in which he lived. Hans Sachs was a capital working 
shoemaker, who lived three hundred years ago — a native 
and resident of Nuremberg. Ne sutor ultra crepidam, should 
be translated for him, " Beyond his last he was not a shoe- 
maker^ for besides drawing the cord, and hammering the 
lapstone industriously, he was the most voluminous poet 
Germany has ever produced, and his songs were even better 
than his shoes, and had a wonderful success and popularity. 
He wrote six thousand eight hundred and forty, which are 
still extant, in thirty-four folio volumes, written with his 
own hand. You can see it in the library. 

The library is not large, but valuable, containing many 
manuscripts, and for so small a library, is rich in incu- 

17 



386 CHURCHES. 

nabula, of which it contains about two thousand — containing 
among its seven hundred bibles, a copy of the first, printed 
by Faust & Schafter, at Mayence, in 1462. 

The churches to which I have alluded are five hundred 
or six hundred years old. They were erected in the days of 
Roman Catholic power, and wealth, and pride — apparently 
built by that Church-building guild, which seems to have 
been omnipresent in those centuries, and to have built all 
over Catholic Christendom — out of Italy — those numerous 
Gothic temples of such wonderful beauty — resembling a great 
scattered family of beautiful sisters, all resembling each 
other, yet no two alike. For three hundred years the pomp 
and masses of the Roman Church were celebrated in them, 
and for the last two hundred years the simple Protestant 
worship has sent its echoes to the same vaulted ceilings, 
and instead of the incense of odorous woods and gums, the 
incense of the new dispensation — more acceptable, as we be- 
lieve — has risen from around the same altars. While one 
could not but rejoice that the hand of destruction had been 
stayed, I am compelled to say that there seemed to me to be 
a jar between the spiritual and the material — between the 
Protestant worship and the Roman Catholic surroundings — 
the altars — the paintings — the statues — the stained glass 
Avindows of wonderful beauty and richness, inwrought with 
the legends, the fables, the allegories, and the sacred histo- 
ries, which are intended to keep alive and active that faith 
which we sometimes calls credulity, and that worship 
which, perhaps, without sufficient consideration, we call 
idolatry. It is no longer given to men to build and finish 
such churches, says some one, in substance. Such master- 
pieces have passed away with the religious enthusiasm that 
excited the genius and guided the hands of the great artists 
of those times. The Catholic faith built the cathedrals but 
it also raised the gibbet, and lighted the fagot. We have no 



CHURCHES. 387 

more such theological hatred and cruelty. No gibbet, and 
no burning stakes, and also no new cathedrals. 

The two most remarkable churches are those of St. 
Sebald and St. Laurent. These saints are the patron saints 
of Nuremberg. St. Sebald is said to have been a German 
hermit of great sanctity and benevolence. Tradition says of 
him, that one night he met a peasant in search of his lost 
cattle, who implored his aid in the darkness, and the kind- 
hearted saint made each of the ten fingers of the poor 
peasant give light like a candle to guide his steps till he 
found his lost oxen. This may not be literally true 
although it is currently believed, and the saint is certainly 
held in high repute. This church has ninety-five windows 
of stained glass, and is in other respects loaded with orna- 
ments. Its greatest attraction, within, is the tomb or monu- 
ment of the saintly hermit himself. Peter Vischer and his 
five sons were thirteen years building it. This magnificent 
casting is fifteen feet high and in the rich Gothic style, 
with figures of the twelve apostles — twelve fathers of the 
Church — and seventy-two other figures. In artistic excel- 
lence few bronzes surpass it. Compared with St. Laurent's 
St. Sebald's has been said to resemble a shop lady in her 
Sunday clothes, while St. Laurent's is all purity and simpli- 
city, like one of Raphael's virgins. You see much to admire 
in St. Sebald's, and you express your admiration with free- 
dom. It is a florid and showy discourse, where the solid 
truth is covered up with flowers. In St. Laurent's the idea 
of admiration hardly presents itself — you are absorbed — the 
spirit of the place comes over you — you stand still, and your 
eye wanders in silence and solemnity over the whole — you 
take it all in, in its unity, and it is not till you are thus im- 
pressed with the united effect, that you draw closer to the 
details and you see that they, too, are but the parts of the 
same grand expression — not put there for ornament, but for 



388 RELIGION. 

emphasis and force — not for admiration, but for religion. 
They are the appropriate melodies of a solemn harmony — 
The holy unction of a devout, and earnest, and eloquent 
sermon. 

The fountains are an interesting feature of the city — the 
most remarkable of which is five hundred years old. It is 
sixty-feet high — a pyramid of stone on an octagonal base — and 
around the lower compartment are sixteen statues, four feet 
high, of the seven electors of the German Empire, the three 
Christian kings, Godfrey de Bouillon, Clovis, and Charle- 
magne — three Jewish heroes, Maccabees, Joshua, and 
David — and three heathens, Julius Caesar, Alexander, and 
Hector — and in the middle compartment Moses and the 
seven prophets. 

If all these principal objects of interest which I have thus 
hastily mentioned, should be taken from Nuremberg, those 
much more numerous of which I have made no mention 
would make it still an object of deep interest to the traveller, 
for he would still find here a sharper, and clearer, and fuller 
mediaeval picture than anywhere else in my knowledge. 

About one tenth of the people here are Catholics — the 
nation is Catholic, and the Court is Catholic — and they see 
here some of the noblest temples ever reared for Koman 
Catholic worship now devoted to the service of the Protes- 
tant Church, yet I do not learn that difference of religion 
interrupts the harmony or mutual respect of the people. 
Wonderful effect of time ! exclaims one of their writers, in 
speaking of the last great battle between Gustavus Adolphus 
and Wallenstein in 1632. Wonderful effect of time ! two 
hundred years had not rolled away after this bloody battle 
fought for difference in religion, when, in 1824, twenty 
thousand Bavarian troops of both religions — holding a camp 
for exercise near Nuremberg — united in the celebration of a 
solemn religious service for their common benefit! More 



AUGSBURG MUNICH. 389 

wonderful to me that two hundred years of the mutualities 
of a common citizenship should have still left it a wonder 
that two classes of Christians should unite in the same 
religious ceremony ! 

We left the old city with the people thronging the streets 
in their holiday dresses — the houses hung with garlands and 
wreaths, and the streets strewn with flowers, while flags 
were waving and banners fluttering all along our way for 
miles — for the King was that day on an appointed visit to 
Nuremberg, having come by a special train with much less 
than what we should consider usual royal display. 

"We again crossed the Danube and arrived at Augsburg, 
that immortal city of Protestantism — wdiere, more than 
three centuries ago, was adopted the Augsburg Confession — 
drawn by Luther, in hard dogmatical and violent language, 
and re-written in milder and less offensive phrase by the 
gentle Melancthon. On the twenty-fifth day of January, 
1530, it was presented to the Diet, and being signed by the 
representatives of the Protestant States, became the creed 
of Protestant Germany. A small majority of the popula- 
tion are now Catholics, but all are said to live together in 
peace and harmony. We hurried on to Munich — the beau- 
tiful capital of Bavaria, and the headquarters of modern 
German art. 

Munich — Monachium — is on the banks of the rapid Isar, 
and it is a fine illustration of what maybe done by a gener- 
ous, protecting, fostering, and encouraging policy. Origin- 
ally a station and depot for the salt-trade — carried on by the 
monks, whence its name Monachium — it came to be the 
homely capital of an Electoral Duchy, and arose to no dis- 
tinction till it felt the influence of the late King Lewis while 
he was but Crown Prince. From his early years addicted 
to art and letters, his taste was highly cultivated in a critical 
point of view, and, as an appetite, he fed it with the choicest 



390 THE GALLERIES. 

gratification, and it grew by what it fed on, till it became a 
habit with him and seemed to be an instinct, to devote his 
purse and his influence, with his taste, to the creating or 
erecting great and useful palaces for learning, for art, for 
taste, and for letters, as well as for royalty — something to 
build up and beautify his capital, and raise it to the first 
rank of European capitals — and he was successful. When he 
voluntarily resigned the throne to his son he handed over to 
him a capital, in all respects, worthy of great admiration, and 
in all those to which his direct attention had been given, one 
quite unsurpassed in Europe. More than doubled in terri- 
torial extent, it has multiplied a hundred fold in beauty, and 
its attractions have brought back to it a rich return in works 
of art — in resident artists, and men of science and letters — in 
enlightened visitors and travellers — and in consequent 
national pride and glory. The Glyptothec — the Pinacothec 
— the Academy of the Fine Arts — the Temple of Fame 
for illustrious Bavarians — the colossal statue of Bavaria — 
the University — the Library — the New Palace, are all of 
them in size and in excellence every way worthy of royal 
effort and munificence. 

The Glyptothec is a vast museum for sculpture. Its 
external architectural effect is that of a great work of art. 
It is of the Ionic order. It contains ancient and modern 
sculptures, classified according to epochs, in twelve separate 
apartments — exhibiting sculpture chronologically — Egyp- 
tian — Etruscan — Eginctan — these latter fortunately pur- 
chased for $30,000, while there was an offer for them, not 
then known, of $40,000 for the British Museum — Phidian — 
Praxitclian — Mythological — Heroic — Roman — Colored sculp- 
ture — Modern sculpture — and the walls and ceilings are 
themselves great works of art, in fresco and stucco — artistic 
back grounds heightening the effect of the marbles. Taken 
all in all, the collection is not surpassed in northern and 
central Europe — nor anywhere out of Rome, it is said 



THE STATUE OP BAVARIA. 391 

The Pinacothec, the great gallery of paintings, is equally 
remarkable, and I believe is, by universal consent, the finest 
picture-gallery in the world, containing fifteen hundred pic- 
tures, nine thousand drawings by the old masters, thirty 
thousand engravings, enamels, chinas, mosaics, several 
thousand vases and rural paintings, including eighteen hun- 
dred Etruscan vases. The ceilings and walls ai'e decorated 
by the first artists in the severest taste. 

The building is about five hundred feet long, of brick, 
finished with stone, and with wings on both sides at each 
end, giving it the form of a double T, joined at the bottom. 
The corner-stone was laid April 7, 1826 — the birth-day of 
Raphael — and it was first opened in 1836. This is the old 
Pinacothec Besides this, there is the new Pinacothec, with 
its frescoes outside, and its modern paintings inside, a most 
magnificent and appropriate temple for modern art. 

The Temple of Fame, for illustrious Bavarians, is an 
immense building, constituting three sides of a parallelo- 
gram, of the Doric order. From a lofty situation it looks 
out upon an open field toward the city, from which it is 
distant and quite distinct. The city will doubtless soon 
stretch out to it, and sweep round the parade-ground or 
meadow, in which it is erected upon an elevated plateau. 
In front of it stands the bronze, colossal statue of Bavaria, 
by Schwanthaler — a female figure, of noble and dignified 
bearing, holding a sheathed broadsword in her hanging 
right hand, the hilt and hand resting on the head of the 
Bavarian lion, at her side. Her left hand, raised above her 
head, holds a civic crown. She wears a helmet, from be- 
neath which, her hair, in wavy ringlets, hangs upon her 
shoulders and back, while heavy but graceful draperies, in- 
cluding a lion skin, envelop her to her sandals. The char- 
acter, the pose, and the effect of the figure, are dignified and 
Rational. It is, I believe, sixty four feet high, besides the 



392 THE LIBRA.RY. 

pedestal, which is large and lofty. We entered the statue 
by an invisible door, and by an internal stairs and ladder 
ascended to the head, within which ten of us were assem- 
bled at the same time, a fact that perhaps gives a better idea 
of the colossal size of the statue than does an outside lodk 
at it — for the artistic details, and the life-like proportions, 
and look of the whole, withdraw the mind from the mere 
size. In the squares and public places are other statues and 
modern monuments, which contribute much to the embel- 
lishment of the city. 

Ludwig strasse — Lewis street — is the great street of the 
city, and is indeed a royal street. It is one hundred and 
fifty feet wide, and upon it are many of the principal public 
buildings — including the library and the university. The 
library building is an honor to letters — I believe the largest 
library building in the world. I know nothing of the sort 
more imposing and magnificent in its beauty than the en- 
trance to this princely establishment. The broad and lofty 
grand staircase, with its colossal statues of Lewis I. and 
Albert V. , by Schwanthaler — its vaulted ceilings, and rich 
frescoes — its dedication to Religion, Science, and Art — its 
vast extent, two hundred and sixty feet wide, and five hun- 
dred and twenty feet long — its seventy-six rooms, with one 
and two galleries, by which the books are accessible to the 
top of the lofty walls — all combine to impress the visitor 
with the best feelings of respect and admiration for its royal 
patron. The library — books — thus worthily housed, is 
itself well worthy of its noble palace. It is, I believe, in 
richness and numbers, the second, if not the first, library in 
the world. I shall not transfer to my letter the memoran- 
dums which I noted from its great analytical catalogue, and 
fi'om its shelves and the glass cases of its bibliographical 
curiosities and gems — in manuscripts — papyri — waxed tab- 
lets — old illuminations and ornaments — curious and jewelled 



THE PALACE. 393 

bindings — rare autographs, etc., etc., etc. Its incunabula 
are said to reach the great number of twelve thousand. 

The University, nearly four hundred years old, as an in- 
stitution, was removed to Munich only in 1826, by the same 
royal authority, and is a prosperous institution. It has also 
a library of its own, of which Munich, the capital, might 
well be proud, if it were not for the great library which so 
far transcends it. 

The King, who has thus devoted his attention to glorify- 
ing his capital, has not so far forgotten himself and his 
royal line, as not to provide them a residence — a palace — 
in fitting harmony with these other monuments — in building 
and ornamenting which, he has utilized those arts and artists 
that the sunshine of his favor has clustered here. 

In the old Palace are many curious sights. There is a 
royal bed-room, in which the bed and hanging, cost one hun- 
dred and and sixty thousand dollars — forty persons having 
devoted seven years to embroidering it. There is also a 
cabinet of mirrors, a small room finished with arches, etc. , 
in the style of Louis Fourteenth, and lined with mir 
rors, and furnished with vases, and porcelains, and orna 
ments, which, with the architecture and furniture of the 
room, are reflected in the mirrors, and thus repeated almost 
infinitely, giving the little room the appearance of a fairy 
palace, of vast extent, filled with shapes and hues of beauty. 
Chandeliers, and other articles of ornament and use, carved 
in ivory, by royal hands — ancestors of the present king — 
are shown and a cabinet of ivory miniatures — the walls 
being covered with miniature copies from the old masters. 

The New Palace, however, built by Lewis, in imitation of 
the Pitti Palace in Florence, contains much more to 
interest and surprise the visitor. I think it is entitled to 
bear away the palm from all the palaces I have seen, in sim- 
plicity, beauty, and richness. The throne-room is especially 
17* 



394 THE HALL OF BEAUTIES. 

worthy of note as exhibiting — in a remarkable degree — the 
simplicity, the wealth, and the exquisite taste, which have 
always characterized King Lewis. The floors of precious 
woods, are of alternating squares about an inch square — a 
remarkable and beautiful specimen of marquetry, whosS 
equal cannot be found I believe. A banqueting-room, hung 
round with paintings by the first masters of the modern 
German school, from patriotic subjects connected with the 
history of Bavaria. The ball-room was covered with paint- 
ings of ancient dances, and ornamented with Pompeiian 
scenes and styles of decoration. The hall of beauties is 
thickly hung with portraits of modern female beauties. The 
King — who, in so many ways, has shown his appreciation of 
beauty — has in this hall shown his admiration of the sex. 
The collection has gradually grown on his hands, for during 
many years, whenever he has seen a remarkably beautiful 
woman, he has commissioned some one of his favorite artists 
to ask her to . sit for her portrait for the King. Of course 
the flattering compliment has never been resisted, and artist, 
and sitter, and King, have been at the same time gratified. 
His Majesty is guided solely by the mere fact of beauty in 
his selection and, of course, his hall of beauties is hung with 
a collection of miscellaneous angels — royal, and noble, and 
plebeian beauties, together. There is the noble and beautiful 
wife of a British ambassador, and the pretty daughter of a 
shoemaker, and the handsome wife of a baker, and so on and 
so on, and conspicuously among them — in a place of honor — 
is the counterfeit presentment of that wild Irish girl, of 
many names and titles, but best known by that of Lola 
Montez. She retains her place among the beauties although 
she cost the beneficent King his crown and throne. Beauti- 
ful, sparkling, and reflective — cultivated and well improved 
— as sensible as she was beautiful — as wise as she was brill- 
iant — in her humor, her wit, and her wisdom, adopting the 



PUBLIC GARDEN. 395 

maxim of Miss Chudleigh, the celebrated Duchess of Kings- 
ton of the last century, to be "short, clear, and surprising," 
she took such strong hold of the old King's admiration and 
fondness that she became his favorite, in the sense in which 
that word was used a hundred years ago — in short she was 
the State. He ennobled her by the title of Countess of 
Landsfeldt, making her the fit associate, in rank, for the 
aristocratic ladies of his court — but a court and a city — often 
said to be the most licentious in Europe — professed to be 
scandalized by the King and his favorite, and in the course 
of a brief period, under advice, he abdicated in favor of his 
son — who is now the reigning monarch — of course the 
Countess of Landsfeldt was dismissed from court. They 
assumed, and it cannot be denied that the history of royalty 
gives color for the assumption, that an old king and a pretty 
woman — constant companions and fondly attached to each 
other — would not be confined to state affairs in all that they 
said and did. It is, however, I believe, fair to say that both 
King and favorite solemnly aver that mutual and well- 
founded admiration of sterling qualities — generous and 
earnest attachment' — unsensual sympathy and respect, and 
unbroken confidence — the proper endearments of the highest 
order of Platonic attachment — were all that passed between 
the royal admirer and his little Venus. Would she call 
witnesses to prove that the King respected as well as admired 
beautiful women, she might summon all the fair originals of 
the portraits of the hall of beauties to testify that so cautious 
was he, lest his admiration should throw suspicion upon 
them — that it was by the intervention of a third party that 
the complimentary request for a portrait was made. 

The free public garden — or place called the Hofgarten — is 
a remarkable contribution to the public gratification. It is 
surrounded by an open arcade of two thousand feet long — its 
corridors arched and frescoed with fine historical paintings of 



396 LINDEN — LAKE CONSTANCE. 

the striking scenes in Bavarian history from early periods, as 
well as true landscapes and views of celebrated places in 
Greece and Italy. The exterior wall of these majestic 
and beautiful arcades are the broad, low-windowed trans- 
parent rears of the richest and gayest shops, cafes, and restau* 
rants in Munich. This mode of spreading the patriotic history 
of the nation before the people cannot fail to have a powerful 
and excellent eifort. 

Louis I. deserves the immortality which his creation of 
this beautiful capital will give him, so long as shall be 
admired the union of high royal qualities, with thorough 
intellectual cultivation, literary and artistic taste, and 
munificence more than princely — for some of his greatest 
public enterprises, have been the gift of his private purse to 
the public gratification and improvement. 

From Munich we went back to Augsburg and down to 
Lindau — Lindavia — on Lake Constance, where the grateful 
Sabbath brought us a day of rest. The situation of the 
little city is exceedingly beautiful, commanding the lake and 
the Swiss shore — and everywhere the foreground and middle 
distance enjoy a beauty and repose which are rarely surpassed 
in quiet and loveliness, while in the far horizon the snow- 
topped mountains are relieved against the sky. I strolled 
from my hotel by the lake into the venerable old town, and 
found two churches near together — one Catholic, the other 
Lutheran. I entered the Lutheran church, but being unable 
to understand what was said or sung I soon left and returned 
to the hotel, and enjoyed the charming outlook from the 
windows. 



€\n$ttx %totntu-fift]i* 

SWITZERLAND. 

FROM Lindau we entered Switzerland, crossing the lake 
diagonally to Romanshorn — Cornu liomanorum — in 
the canton of Zurich — some fifteen miles — and there we took 
a diligence for Zurich — Tigunm — the beautiful little capital 
of that canton. We spent but half a day there, but that 
was quite enough to enable us to go through its prosperous 
streets, to purchase some souvenirs in its pretty shops, and to 
stroll through its romantic promenades, asd from a lofty 
observatory to look out upon and enjoy one of the most 
lovely of landscapes — composed by nature with all the per- 
fection of artistic taste, as a composition. Situated on both 
sides of the Limmat where it empties into the lake, and on 
the lake — you have the city, and its streets, and spires, and 
towers at your feet — the river and its valley on the one hand 
and the lake and the basin in which it lies on the other — 
on the margin of both, the rural residences, and farms, and 
cottages, and the fine cultivation of thrifty husbandry. 
Still beyond are the rude and broken mountain scenes — ■ 
while stretching far across the horizon, the white summits 



398 SWITZERLAND — ZURICH. 

of the Alps, mingle with the silvery cumulous clouds, from 
which it is not always easy to distinguish them. 

Far off as these summits may be — say fifty miles — they 
seem to be comparatively near. I have often noticed in 
prints and pictures this effect, and supposed that it was to bft 
attributed to the difficulty of transferring to a drawing the 
truth of the scene. But that effect is the truth of nature — 
and it is doubtless to be charged to the sharp and distinct 
outlines, and the pure white — the effect of which is natur- 
ally to bring the object forward. 

We visited the house of Zwingle — the great Swiss reformer 
— who was contemporary with Luther, with whom, however, 
he could not agree in all things. After long and earnest 
conference and efforts to agree they found it impossible — in 
some cardinal points — and gave up the effort, agreeing to 
one thing, however, which really made them one — they agreed 
that — notwithstanding their differences in points of belief — 
they could live in Christian charity with each other. 
Zwingle had unbounded influence over the Zurichers, and it 
was through his influence that the canton became thorough- 
ly Protestant as it still is. In the hot zeal of religious 
fanatical animosity, a war broke out between Zurich and the 
neighboring Catholic canton, and, as was sometimes the 
custom in those times, the feai'less and eloquent pastor took 
the field as a standard-bearer, and bore aloft in the fight the 
banner of Protestantism, and with prophetic frenzy urged 
the soldiers to trust in God, as they met double their num- 
ber — But God wrought no miracle that day in their favor — 
the strong triumphed over the weak. The Zurichers were 
defeated, and Zwingle was found among the slain. His 
followers were always characterized by liberality and charity 
to other reformers — and by a milder spirit and gentler per- 
suasives to a devout life and works of goodness, than some of 
those whose abstractions and rigid faith failed to touch the 
sympathies of the general mind. 



THE FACE OF THE COUNTRY. 399 

The early championship of reform and religious freedom, 
gave to this canton and its capital a sort of pre-emi- 
nence which have always been maintained, being now and 
ever unsurpassed in thrift and husbandry. In town and 
country, in village and hamlet, in the field and by the way, 
wherever your cast your eyes, you see that nature is sub- 
dued by intelligence and industry — you seem to be always 
passing the fields of the same beautiful farm, where house, 
and barn, and tree, and meadow, and planted field, 
acknowledge the same kind master, and smile with the same 
joy in the sunshine and the showers. The farm-houses, the 
cottages, the chalets — while there is diversity in their form 
and construction — as in our houses — are nevertheless char- 
acteristically alike, and in some particulars and usages 
strike us very strangely. Their low appearance — their broad 
roofs, with heavy stones on them to prevent their blowing 
away — with eaves projecting three to ten feet and sometimes 
almost reaching the ground and their balconies and outside 
stairs, have a novel and agreeable effect — while the barn, and 
stable, and house under one roof and entered from the same 
wide hall, and the immense heap of stable and barn manure 
ostentatiously made regular and showy, directly in front Oi 
the house — half way between the door and the road — at first 
sight suggested offensive and unnecessary filth, but on inquiry, 
utility and comfort became agricultural beauty. In this 
country of long and severe winters and drifting snows of 
insurmountable depth, it is quite important that the cattle 
should be comfortably housed, where they are always conve- 
niently accessible, that they may receive that constant care 
which the best husbandry always gives to its dumb and faith- 
ful servants — and their proximity, instead of begetting habits 
of filth in the people, enforces upon them, on the other 
hand, habits of the most watchful neatness — and that heap 
of manure is really a matter of ostentation with the farmer, 



400 THE HAT HARVEST. 

for while it is in a place most convenient for him, by compost- 
ing and proper care he makes it more valuable and prevents its 
being either offensive or unsightly. He makes it large and adds 
to it as fast as he takes from it, so that he need never use 
any part of it, till — mellow and purified by age — it is an ino- 
dorous and perfect fertilizer — and its quantity is evidence of 
his thrift and his ability to make provision, for years in 
advance of his need. He is as proud of it as he would be 
of well-stored granaries in view of a scarcity. 

The farmex'S were in their hay harvest — the season had 
been wet and the crop was heavy. The weather was now 
fine, and the meadows were perfectly alive with hay-makers — 
a great many more women than men — the women neatly 
dressed — in this respect much superior to. the German 
women. I noticed, however, one instance which seemed 
to far outdo what I had seen in Germany of women at 
field work. It was an old woman, gray and wrinkled } 
seeming to be bowed and tottering with years, yet carrying 
a burden in a large tub, like a wash-tub, strapped to the 
shoulders like a knapsack. As we passed her, I thought I 
could see, in the look which she turned upon us, that, like 
me, she was marking the great contrasts between her situa- 
tion and ours. We noticed a few instances of goitre and 
cretinism. There was one peculiarity in the hay harvest 
which was novel. In extensive meadows we noticed that 
the hay was all loaded upon wagons, which were standing 
in different parts of the meadows. I counted twenty, thirty, 
fifty, and once, I think, a hundred wagons at the same lime 
standing loaded, in the fields in sight embracing several 
farms — and not a team, horse, ox, or mule, attached to any 
of them. I neglected to ask the cause of a practice which 
seems to me to require, on a farm, an extraordinary supply 
of what, in railroad phrase, is called rolling stock, but I 
concluded that something in the climate or weather rendered 



BADEN — BERNE. 401 

it best to put up the hay, as soon as cured, on wagons — in- 
stead of in hay-cocks, as we do — and to let all stand, till 
they are all loaded, and then, with one or two pairs of 
horses, drive the loads into the barns as fast as they can be 
unloaded by many other active hands, who do nothing but 
unload the hay and run out the empty wagons. 

From Zurich, toward Berne, we went some twenty-five 
or thirty miles by railroad to Baden, a watering place. We 
reached the depot in an omnibus, and after I had taken my 
seat in the cars, I recollected that I had left my hat — one 
of those folding hats on a frame of steel springs — in the 
pocket of the coupe of the diligence at Zurich. I usually 
travelled in a cap. I called the conductor of the train to 
know if I could have time to drive back to the diligence 
station, to seek my hat — he said no, but if I would give a 
description of it, and a memorandum where it would reach 
me, he would send it to me. He assured me it could not be 
lost. I hastily scrawled on a scrap of paper the necessary 
direction, and gave it to him. The third day after I arrived 
at Geneva, on inquiring at the post-office, I received my 
hat, safe, carefully wrapped up with paper and twine — post- 
age ten cents. I had other more surprising illustrations of 
the completeness, the precision, and the reliability of all 
their travelling arrangements in Switzerland. The whole 
is one connected, intelligent, and sympathetic system — the 
parts and the whole mutually responsible for each other. 

Baden is a popular watering-place, which was celebrated 
for its warm baths in the time of Tacitus — called Thermce 
Helvetica, and Thermae Saperiores. 

We hurried through Berne — Berna — with even less stay 
than at Zurich. We had only time to see that it is a well- 
built, beautiful, and interesting city. A mere sight-seer 
might spend a couple of days here with pleasure and profit, 
among its fountains and statues, its libraries and collections. 



402 LAUSANNE. 

and museums, and curiosities, and buildings, and institu- 
tions, and views. It is called Berne, from ber, said to be the 
vernacular for bear, in primitive bernese, and therefore 
they keep, at the public expense, a few bears, which may 
be always seen in the ditches of the fortification, as thte 
Venetians keep their pet pigeons about San Marco. The 
sidewalks of the city are covered by arcades, or a projection 
of the second story, while also the Swiss broad eaves pro- 
ject beyond that. There is thus a protection from the deep 
snows, which might otherwise render the walks impassable. 
It is built on the Aar, the outlet of Lake Thun. The 
city is seventeen hundred feet above the sea, and more than 
five hundred feet above the lake of Geneva, and about four 
hundred feet higher than Lake Zurich, and Lake Thun is still 
near one hundred feet higher, so that the Aar has a rapid 
current. It runs through the city in narrow canals, one or 
two feet wide and deep, through the centre of the streets, 
being an exceedingly convenient scavenger to hurry out of 
the city whatever might offend the eyes or the health of the 
people. This neatness, together with the high level of the 
city, makes the city one of the healthiest in the world. It 
is said, that of every four children born, one reaches the 
age of seventy years — and that, among every one hundred 
deaths, you are sure to find twenty or twenty-five, seventy 
to one hundred years old. The whole chain of the Alps is 
in view here. 

At Lausanne — Lausanna — Lusonium — we came to the 
shores of the beautiful Lake Leman — Lake of Geneva — in 
the time of the Romans, Lacm Lausannus — over which we 
go by steamer to Geneva. Our breakfast finished, an 
omnibus took us from the hotel to the landing, or port, 
Ouchy, a distance of a mile or so — a pleasant drive, through 
a fine portion of the city, and its lake suburb. The city 
itself rises abruptly from the lake, and is seated on several 



GENEVA. 403 

steep hills, and their intervening valleys. The rich foliage 
of clustering vines, and luxuriant vegetation, and various 
flowers — on those south-looking hills — in the courts, and gar- 
dens, and grounds — the broad and beautiful lake sweeping 
oiFon either hand — the further shore rugged and precipitous, 
and beyond it the peaks — appropriately called " teeth" and 
"needles" — like silver spears piercing the very clouds, was a 
delightful panorama, as we sat on the deck of the boat and 
moved down the lake amid the shifting scenes. 

On the ever memorable and blessed Fourth of July, we 
welcomed ourselves to the famous republican city of Geneva. 
The entrance from the lake is beautiful. We took lodcin^s 
in the excellent Hotel des Bergues, situated on the quay of 
the river Rhone. Our rooms were as beautiful in situation 
and out-look as they were in finish, and furniture, and 
comfort within. From our windows we looked down upon 
Rousseau Island — a charming little island in the Rhone, 
approached by a small foot-bridge — taking its name from a 
bronze statue of Jean Jacques — the island and the monumental 
statue, both dedicated to the memory of that strange philoso- 
pher. In the near distance are the precipitous calcareous 
blutfs — Mont Saleve — with naked strata — which shut out 
the low horizontal prospect, but over and beyond them are 
the vast and heaven-daring chain of the Alps, making a 
horizon of great beauty, grandeur and sublimity. 

Our letters, accummulated here, took us back to the 
delights of home, while everything about us forced us — by 
an easy analogy — to turn our thoughts to this remarkable 
country — in some respects not unlike our own. 

The country takes its name from Schwytz — one of the small 
Catholic cantons — yet they are all Swiss. The Gallic race, 
from France, so mercurial and versatile — the Gothic, from 
Germany, so speculative and persevering — the Latin, from 
Italy, so superstitious and indolent, and all so aristocratic 



404 LIBERTY — PATEIOTISM. 

and monarchical, have combined to make the Swiss -what 
they are — so passionately patriotic — so simple and true- 
hearted — so intelligent and faithful — such pattern republi- 
cans. Nowhere else, as here, are liberty, equality, and fra- 
ternity so instinctive and unchangeable. " Les hommes soht 
nes pour Vordre et non pour la servitude, Us doivent elire leurs 
magisttuts, mais non romper sous des maitres," said the Appen- 
zellians four hundred and fifty years ago — " Men were born 
for dominion, not servitude — they should elect their magis- 
trates, but not cringe under masters." 

There is diversity in the constitutional organization of 
their governments, but the declaration of Appenzell is the 
fundamental principle of them all. The scenery of their 
Alpine country does not differ more from that of the sur- 
rounding countries, than their society, their character, and 
their government do from those, surrounded by which, they 
have maintained their morals and manners, and have always 
been the garrison of a great fortress of freedom. 

It would not be uninteresting, hackneyed as the stories are, 
to bring together some of their striking histories and incidents 
of their heroes, their patriotism, and their freedom, and of 
Melchtal, Faust, Stauffacher, Winkelried, and Tell, as their 
representative men. How they have been educated in self- 
defence by their great festivals, and competitions in target 
shooting, and all the practice of hunter's life. How they have 
multiplied their power by universal education and intelli- 
gence — by universal good morals and religion, and the 
invincible mutualities of the family relation — altars, and 
hearths, and household gods. In peace they have prepared 
for war — in their primitive times — not by exhausting and 
expensive munitions, and fortifications, and demoralizing 
armies, but by making every man a soldier, with the devo- 
tion of a patriot, with the fierce and stubborn bravery and 
self-reliance of a mountain hunter, and the intelligence 



RELIGION. 405 

and address of a commander. These things are familiar, 
but you cannot realize, without being on the spot, how 
they take possession of your reflective moments — and suggest 
political, and social, and moral truths and speculations, which 
absorb you, and which you cannot, if you would, drive 
away. Deeply interesting to all intelligent travellers, it is 
doubly so to citizens of the United States, to travel through 
this wonderful country. 

This love of liberty has of course brought with it free 
thought and universal education, and has brought great 
intellectual activity, so that while Switzerland con- 
tains only about one per cent, of the population of Europe, 
it boasts of long lines of great and distinguished men in all 
the walks of literary and scientific eminence, rarely equalled 
in nations ten times as large. 

Zurich, and Berne, and Vaud are much the largest and 
most populous cantons, containing about half the population 
of Switzerland — and in them the Protestant population is 
tenfold greater than the Catholic. The canton of Lucerne 
is also a large canton, and the Catholic religion predomi- 
nates as largely there. Of all the cantons, Geneva is much 
the most thickly settled, and Grisons much the most thinly 
settled. About two thirds of the Swiss speak the German 
language, about one fifth French, and the residue Italian and 
Romanish. The aggregate number of Protestants is much 
greater than of Catholics. They are mixed in most of the 
cantons, and in some pretty equally. Everywhere, I 
believe, they live peaceably with each other, but have as 
little sympathy or disposition to coalesce as they have else- 
where. In the Catholic portions there are religious houses, 
of several ordei-s, but so far as we saw, they do not here, as 
elsewhere, fill the streets with mendicant monks and ragged 
beggars. We have seen none, but our journey has been 
— much of the time — in the more Protestant cantons. 



406 GENEVA. 

Fable says Geneva was founded by Lemanus, a son of 
Paris, soon after the fall of Troy — hence the name of the 
lake, Leraan, called after him. Reliable and recorded his- 
tory makes it a considerable town in the time of Julius 
Ceesar. It was the seat of a Christian bishop fifteen hun- 
dred years ago. After ages of strife, and bloodshed, and 
change of dominion, in the early part of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, romantic instances of patriotic devotion, of suffering and 
martyrdom, so excited and strengthened the people, that, 
with the aid of the reformation, which spread rapidly in 
Switzerland, Geneva assumed her political and religious 
independence, and in 1535 became a free State, with a ter- 
ritory less than ten miles square, and with less than fifty thou- 
sand people. One can hardly believe that in the stormy 
times of political and religious revolution, so small a com- 
munity would have presumed to set up for itself, and, 
perhaps, it was a consciousness of their weakness that induced 
them to invite John Calvin to lend his counsel to the little 
republic. During twenty-eight years that great man ex- 
ercised vast influence in church and state, and laid so well 
the foundation of the infant state as justly to meiit the 
character of its founder. 

There is hardly a city of the size of Geneva in Europe so 
justly celebrated. It has been the birth-place of so many — 
an asylum for so many — the chosen residence or the resort of 
so many great men — that it is as beautiful in its history as 
in its situation, and surroundings, and institutions. 

Rousseau was born here, and always added to his name— as 
a title of honor — citizen of Geneva. From having been the 
idol of his native city he became an exile — his most elaborate 
and famous works were burned in the City Hall place, by a 
decree of the public authorities. Banished from France he 
sought an asylum here, but found the gates shut against him, 
and he never returned — but after his death, the generations 



LOCAL OELEBRITES. 407 

that never knew him have given to his name and memory all 
the glory which he deserved. We visited the house where he 
was born, and the square where his books were burned, and 
the beautiful little island, whose great attraction is the 
bronze statue in his honor. This little island — reached by a 
small suspension bridge, and beautifully planted and kept — 
is one of the most exquisite and charming little spots I have 
seen in Switzerland. 

In and about the city, other celebrities, still holding their 
places in the temple of fame, have dwelt for longer or 
shorter periods. Voltaire, and Milton, and the Empress 
Josephine, after her divorce, resided here. Lord Byron — at 
his Maison Deodati — now a water-cure — wrote Manfred and 
the third canto of Childe Harold. Side by side — in the 
beautiful Protestant burying-ground — are the graves of Sir 
Humphrey Davy and De Candolle. Bayle, Necker and his 
daughter — Madame de Stael — enjoyed a quiet, literary, and 
philosophical repose at Coppet, a village hard by. I might 
fill a page with the names of theologians, publicists, histor- 
ians, naturalists, mathematicians, engineers, and artists, 
whose European eminence is part of the local glory of this 
little city — and the academies, and seminaries, the museums, 
collections, and libraries, to which many of them have con- 
tributed their labors — are among the interesting objects to 
visit. These have also done much to make it what it has 
long been — one of the best and most frequented resorts for 
common, useful, elementary education. Its excellent schools 
are resorted to by many who come from abroad to enjoy 
the healthy atmosphere, the quiet scenes, the gentle influ- 
ences, the thorough instructions, the simple republican man- 
ners, the good morals, and the freedom from temptation, 
which have characterized it for ages. The public library 
— of forty thousand volumes — was founded by Bonnivard, 
the prisoner of Chillon, three hundred years ago — and is an 



408 GENEVA TO CM AMOUNT. 

excellent library, containing a large number of exceedingly 
rare and valuable bibliographical and literary curiosities. 

The Cathedral of St. Peter — some six or eight hundred 
years old, the date is variously fixed — is an object of great 
interest. Situated on the highest part of the city, it ie 
externally lofty and majestic — within it is striking and 
solemn in its simplicity and severe gravity — having been 
stripped of all its Roman Catholic ornaments by the icono- 
clasts of the reformed religion. It is the mother church of 
Calvinism, and it is a noble temple of that faith. 

We started on our onward course to Chamouni, and so 
across the Alps. It was a morning of great beauty, and 
our horses and conductor seemed to feel the spirit of the 
weather, and dashed on in the finest spirit, along the banks 
of the Arve, which empties into the Rhone, a little way 
from Geneva. At Anemasse we crossed the line which 
separates Switzerland from Savoy, and again enjoyed the 
luxuiy of being overhauled by a frontier custom-house, for 
here we entered the kingdom of Sardinia, in which are situ- 
ated the valley of the Arve, Sallenches, and the lofty moun- 
tain valley of Chamouni. 

On our way, almost always, the snowy Alps, and often 
Mont Blanc, are distinctly in sight — seeming to be close at 
hand — cliffs, immense and lofty, overhang the road. At 
Cluse, a village which had been burnt up and rebuilt, the 
needful supply of fire-buckets, probably provided at the pub- 
lic expense, were hanging in the public square. Here am- 
monites and other petrifactions abound in the rocks, and 
near here, up the mountains, more than seven thousand feet 
above the sea, are also marine petrifactions. On these 
overhanging cliffs, cascades sometimes start out, as it were, 
from a hole in the rock, leap from rock to rock, and finally 
spring over a dizzy precipice, and reach the bottom in spray 
and foam, with a wonderful and beautiful effect. The re- 



WATERFALL OP ARPENAS. 409 

markable waterfall of Arpenas is near to Cluse. A small 
stream pours over the brow of a precipice, eight hundred 
feet high, and long before it has made half the descent, the 
stream of water has been turned to many beautiful inverted 
cones of mere snowy spray, which, still lower down, seem 
to vanish entirely, and a fine and foggy vapor is all that is 
left of the stream that leaped over the brow of the moun- 
tain. It finally condenses, and collects below in little milky 
streams. The beauty of the whole cascade is quite indes- 
cribable, and the rugged rocky summits are no less striking 
— some of them are like nothing that I have ever seen 
before — huge points of rock, sharp and angular — in form, 
and structure, and arrangement, like a cluster of crystals of 
dog-tooth spar, quite as distinct and characteristic, only in- 
finitely greater. These scenes are on the left, while on the 
right, from the valley, stretches a rising and rolling culti- 
vated hill-side, dotted with chalets and divided into farms, 
about which are nibbling and browsing cattle and sheep 
and goats. 

Arriving at Sallenches, there is a noble view of Mont 
Blanc and his skyey neighbors, well worth stopping in that 
beautiful spot to look at with awe and wonder. St. 
Martins on one side of a bridge, and Sallenches on the other, 
and the scenes of the valley above and around are charming. 
Our spanking teams dashed across the bridge and whirled us 
up to the hotel, where all snatched a hasty dinner which 
stood ready for us, during which our capacious diligences 
had given place to small light wagons, with seats for five 
besides the driver, and then I first learned that we were to 
find our further way in those wagons, over steep and rugged 
roads, which are impracticable to the diligence. 

We had formed a travelling acquaintance in the diligence 
with an English party — a gentleman of much intelligence, 
and unusual vivacity for an Englishman — a lieutenant, 

18 



410 ALPINE HORN. 

who had served in India, and his wife. They were our 
wagon companions also, and contributed much to the pleas- 
ure of the tugging ascent. At Servos — half way between 
Sallenches and Chamouni — we stopped to hear the sur- 
prising echoes come back from the surrounding mountains 
and valleys. An Alpine horn is kept there, a blast of 
which, after a moment, comes back from every direction — 
repeated successively, with great distinctness — and finally 
dies away among the valleys in the crisp and curt, rattling, 
repetitious volley of a distant feu clejoie 

We crept slowly up the mountains, always following the run 
of the Arve. Sometimes our road was along the bank and on 
the level of the stream, and sometimes it was in the side of the 
mountain, a narrow and fearful highway, from which you 
look down one hundred to three hundred feet upon the 
tops of the mountain evergreens — which only imperfectly 
conceal the narrow and rocky ravine, through which the 
milky torrent mutters and frets and raves among the obstruc- 
tions of its Alpine descent. As we came out into a clear- 
ing and passed over an outlooking elevation, Mont Blanc 
still rose before us, and some of the glaciers seemed to be close 
upon us. Over the more steep and difficult spots the gentle- 
men surrendered the carriage to the ladies, and walked 
up the steep ascent, with a freer look and a freer talk. My 
English companion, who had the most years, was quite 
sure that Mont Blanc was not so much of a sight as he had 
supposed. He had no doubt that the English mountains — 
some of them — were quite as high as Mont Blanc. He was 
sure it was not higher than Skiddaw. I told him that in 
the presence of Mont Blanc, England had no mountains 
whatever. He could not tell me the height of Skiddaw, 
and the lieutenant had never before heard of that mountain. 
Skiddaw is three thousand feet high, and Mont Blanc more 
than fifteen thousand feet. 



CHAMOUNI. 411 

When we opened into the valley of Chamouni the scene 
changed. The glaciers which we had seen at Sallenches, 
and occasionally since, were now near us, and finally by the 
roadside — while on the other hand was high and precipitous 
hills, fifteen hundred feet high — gray and perpendicular 
rocks, of rugged and beautiful outline, speckled with spots of 
snow, and interspersed with green fields, and gardens, and 
chalets — a scenery of striking contrasts, and of sharp and 
distinct outline and of great beauty — more than three thous- 
and feet above the sea. 

This valley was unknown to travellers before 1741, when 
it was discovered by the Englishmen, Pocock and Wind- 
ham, and by them revealed and described. Its convenience 
as a resting place, and point of departure — the beauty of the 
valley — the great glaciers, which come down there to the very 
valley, and the greatest and most remarkable of all of them 
so easily accessible there — the merde glace — the fine outlook 
Montanvert, accessible on mules in three hours — the sub- 
lime and indescribable view of Mont Blanc in its greatest glory 
and all the dangerous pathway up its icy and fearful stages — 
have all combined to make Chamouni known to all trav- 
ellers in Switzerland — and to build up there a smart little 
settlement, with very large, commodious, and well appoint- 
ed hotels, and the largest and best supply of guides and all the 
appliances necessary for safe and convenient travel to the 
points of great attraction. 

The beautiful weather with which we left Geneva, and 
which had continued till we retired to rest, induced us to 
make arrangements for an early start on horseback over the 
Tete Noire. We were waked in the morning by the passing 
of our horses past our windows, ready saddled and led by 
our guides. But before we were dressed, it thickened up, 
and before we were through our breakfast, a fine and misty 
rain, such as had obscured the scene so much during this 



412 BACK FROM CHAMOUNI. 

season, commenced its drizzle. There was of course no 
going that day, and there could be no reliable opinion when 
we should have an opportunity to cross with good weather 
so Ave changed our plan on the instant and determined to 
return immediately to Geneva, and leave our further Alpine 
excursions till we should come again, when a drier summer 
should make the narrow ways, the steep ascents, and the 
mountain gorges, less slippery and dangerous With rainy 
and misty weather, Montanvert and the mer de glace are im- 
practicable, and the passage of the Tete Noire and the Col de 
Baline undesirable as well as impossible — and unless we could 
afford the time to wait upon Providence, our only way was, 
with a good grace, to be reconciled to the disappointment. So 
we returned to Geneva by the way we came — but the scene 
was changed and the view different — clouds and mist hung 
over and sat upon portions of the scene — the streams were 
swollen and angry — the cascades and little streams of the cliffs 
looked wild and savage, and sometimes seemed to come out 
of the clouds — the Alpine horn gave back no echo, and the 
snowy Alps concealed themselves behind the dusky curtains 
that shut in the horizon. As we passed one of the dreariest 
spots, near a small hamlet, the diligence stopped, and from 
a humble chalet came a young woman without a hat. Her 
trunk was put on. She was evidently leaving her wretched 
goitre-cursed home for beautiful Geneva. But her eyes did 
not see the homeliness of her home, nor the goitre of her 
mother, nor the folly of her cretin sister. She only saw 
them with the eyes of her heart. She wept and sobbed 
almost to death as she convulsively kissed them, as though it 
were her last good-bye. It was a scene that might hap- 
pen in any country, but here it brought forcibly to mind that 
characteristic attachment of the Swiss to their home, of 
which such striking anecdotes are told. 

From Geneva we went the grand circuit of the lake by 



CIRCUIT OF THE LAKE. 413 

steamer. The lake is forty-five miles long, in the shape of a 
crescent, and eight miles broad in the broadest place, and it 
varies in depth from three hundred to twelve hundred feet. 
On its concave northern shore is Switzerland — on its convex 
southern shore is wild, rude, rocky Savoy. All along the Swiss 
shore are beautiful little towns — little ports, thrifty,prosperous, 
and active — cultivated fields,and vineyards — smiling and beau- 
tiful landscapes stretching back from the lake. Morges — about 
half way up the lake is one of the principal ports of the Pays 
de Vaud — as we passed it, it was alive with the banners and 
crowds of one of those target-shooting festivals, which bring 
together the sharp-shooters, and the frolicksome, as well as the 
graver people from all the neighboring cantons. On the Savoy 
side here and there, among the cliffs and on the beetling shore, 
are several pretty and interesting little villages, from be- 
hind and about which, precipitous rocks, and unfriendly and 
impracticable hills rise toward the higher mountains, whose 
peaks and glaciers give such grandeur to some of the views. 
In the dry and steady heats of summer the Swiss lakes and 
streams are more swollen than in other portions of the year, 
because the burning summer sun melts more pi'ofusely the 
Alpine snows, and ices, and glaciers. This lake rises thus 
about six feet. There are other singular phenomena that I 
should have been glad to see. In stormy weather, in the 
presence of a thunder cloud, the middle of the lake suddenly 
rises five or six feet, leaving the sides low and sometimes 
bare, and as quickly subsides. The harbor of Geneva is 
said to have been once laid dry in this manner. The effect, 
I believe, is considered to be electrical. Sometimes, in a 
calm, something like the little sea of a tide is visible — and 
sometimes the lake blossoms, as it is called — the margin 
being covered with a thick body of almost indistinguishable 
insects. We had a smooth summer day on the lake, but 
the storms are very violent and dangerous in spring and 



414 CHILLON. 

autumn, when the winds come with a violence and sud- 
denness which can neither be foreseen or resisted. Byron 
and Shelley narrowly escaped being lost in a storm, near 
Meillerie, on the Savoy shore. 

At Villeneuve — Pennilucus — the Rhone enters the lake 
through a large delta. In its rapid course from its rise, in 
the Upper Valais, it receives the waters of eighty minor 
streams, which it empties into the lake — and at Geneva, in 
a rapid, and deep, and beautiful torrent, it bears the waters 
of the lake through the city of Geneva, and constantly 
increases by large tributaries, till it unites with the Saone, 
at Lyons, and thus becomes a great navigable thoroughfare 
from interior France to the Mediterranean at Marseilles. 

The boat stopped at Villeneuve long enough for us to go 
ashore and visit the castle of Chillon, made so interesting 
and famous by the poem of Bj'ron and the sufferings of 
Bonnivard. The castle stands on a small island connected 
with the main land by a draw-bridge, which is always open 
at night. This little island — a breakwater island — and the 
precious little islet with three trees, mentioned in the poem, 
are the only islands on the lake. 

The castle of Chillon is a venerable old fortress on the 
very shore of the lake. The poem of Byron has made every 
part of it deeply interesting, although the scene of the poem 
is confined to one room. The poem itself derives its most in- 
teresting thoughts and descriptions from facts which are the 
pure creations of his genius. There were no three brothers con- 
fined together there — of course no dying one after another — but 
there is a dim, low vaulted chamber, low as the level of the lake 
— there are the low and stumpy columns bearing the heavy 
oppressive arches — there are the tyrannical ringbolts — there 
is the earthy floor trodden hard and smooth, as though the 
poor prisoners had just left their weary little circuit and their 
worrying fetters. But there was but one prisoner — Bonni- 



BONNIVARD. 415 

vard — the hero, the scholar, the man of letters — was there 
alone — no brothers, no fellow-prisoners — He struck for the 
freedom of his country, and was made a prisoner, and was 
kept there, in a dungeon, six years, simply by the will of the 
tyrannical Duke of Savoy- -never leaving his dungeon — not 
even for fresh air or light. The breath of air and dim rays of 
light came only through a crevice window, in a wall 
of immense thickness — through which, when released from 
his chains, he might look a straight look upon the water — 
eight hundred and thirty-five feet deep — that dashed against 
the wall. In 1536 the Bernese and the Genevese combined 
to capture the Pays de Vaud from the Duke of Savoy. 
Chillon held out to the last, but while the Bernese, closely 
invested it by land, the Genevese attacked it from the lake, 
and it surrendered — when Bonnivard and the other prisoners 
were set at liberty. When tyranny chained him to that 
dungeon-column, Geneva was a Roman Catholic canton, sub- 
jugated to Charles V., of Savoy. When his fetters were 
knocked off and he was hurried to the free open air, his own 
liberty was not more welcome to him than the news that 
Geneva was rejoicing in the independence of a free republic 
and the free worship of the reformed religion. 

One is so wrapped up in the Bonnivard prison that the other 
places, and modes, and instruments of torture are passed more 
carelessly by — the little chapel for bigoted worship — that 
black and dingy beam in the gloomy shades of a vault, where 
some were murdered on the gibbet — and below them those 
absolutely rayless dungeons of cruelty, where others were bur- 
ied — and that fearful well, through the trapdoor of which the 
victim was hurried down three steps as to the floor of a 
dungeon, but the fourth step was to the bottom of that well, 
ninety feet deep, where he was dashed to pieces on the 
rocks — and the place of execution where — five hundred 
years ago, 1348 — twelve hundred Jews were burned alive on 



416 LAUSANNE. 

the cruel suspicion of a concerted plan by the Jews to poison 
all the wells of Europe. A large portion of the castle is 
now used as an arsenal for the arms of Vaud. 

From Chillon and Villeneuve we steamed down the Swiss 
shore of the lake to Vevay and thence to Ouchy — the port 
of Lausanne — where we left the boat, having now, with 
our first voyage down to Geneva, completed the circuit of 
the lake. It was at the Anchor Hotel in Ouctry, in 1816, 
that Byron — kept indoors by bad weather — wrote the Pris- 
oner of Chillon, whose beauties will make the mere inven- 
tions of the poet take the place of history, in the mind of the 
general reader, in spite of himself. 

At Lausanne, our hotel occupied the site of the house where 
Gibbon wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 
It is the great hotel of the town. The town itself has about 
sixteen thousand people. It is approached from the lake by 
a laborious ascent, so steep as to occupy about half an hour 
in reaching it, although the distance is very short — and it is 
built irregularly on hills and valleys, which are steep and 
wearisome — no where less than five hundred and thirty feet 
above the level of the lake. The town is very old — dating 
back to the sixth century, and it was at that early period 
that one of the bishops made it the seat of his bishopric, 
and brought hither the holy relics — a piece of the true cross 
— one of the ribs of Mary Magdalen — a lock of the Virgin 
Mary's hair — a piece of the holy cradle in which the infant 
Savior was rocked — and a rat which had snatched up and 
devoured a consecrated wafer. These drew such crowds of 
pilgrims that the town grew with precocious rapidity — and 
in the year 1000, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, one of the 
finest Gothic churches in Europe, was commenced, and fin- 
ished in 1275. It is situated on the top of one of the hills 
which commands the whole city. It has inscriptions without 
and within, and has many remarkable tombs, ancient as well 



CATHEDRAL SCENERY. 417 

as modern. Lausanne, like Geneva, is Presbyterian — having, 
about as early as that city, cordially adopted the principles 
and practices of the Reformation. The cathedral was, of 
course, reduced to Presbyterian simplicity, and adapted to the 
usages of the republican government. It has its seats for men 
and seats for women — a place for the officers of the church 
— another for the regents of the university — another for the 
court of appeals — and another for the council of state. Near 
the old statue of Notre Dame, holes are worn in the stone 
pavement by the feet of those who bowed to do her honor. 
There is also a small chapel for catechising the children. 
While there was more to interest us in Notre Dame, at 
Lausanne, than in St. Pierre, at Geneva, I thought the 
Geneva cathedral was more solemn and religious, in its 
aspect, than that of Lausanne. 

From the lofty site of the old cathedral, one realizes the 
magnificence of the site of Lausanne. It is unequalled in 
Switzerland, and for its characteristic beauties must be un- 
surpassed in the world — taking in the chains of the Jura and 
of the Alps, and the intervening valley — the lake of Geneva, 
and both its shores — and every variety of scene — from the 
sublimest mountain chains of barren and glistening ice to 
the loveliest valleys of tropical beauty and fertility. "Water 
and land — hill and valley and plain — town and country — 
bay and promontory — sailing and steaming craft — ravine 
and ledge and cliff — and terraced and trellised vineyards — 
all seemed to be combined in every form of beauty. No won- 
der that it has always been a favorite resort for travellers and 
resident strangers of distinction — that its schools and semi- 
naries should be among the best, and its society distinguished 
for intellectual and social cultivation and polish. Its schools 
may well be spoken of as the fair representation of public 
education in Switzerland, although each canton — each com- 
mune, indeed — manages its schools in its own way. I made 

18* 



418 POPULAR EDUCATION. 

no specific, detailed, inquiries except at Lausanne, but all are 
believed to be substantially alike. No one can travel 
through the cantons which we traversed- — Zurich, Argovia, 
Lucerne, Berne, Fribourg, Vaud, Geneva, Neufchatel, and 
Basle — without being convinced that their power is derived 
from their system of popular education. Ample provision is 
made for the free education of the people — in religion, 
reading, writing, linear-drawing, grammar, arithmetic, 
book-keeping, geography, history of Switzerland, natural 
philosophy and its practical applications, composition, and the 
rights and duties of the citizen. These schools are established 
and sustained by the votes of the people, and the people are 
by law compelled to send their children to them, from the 
age of six to fourteen, under penalties. The schoolmaster has 
a roll or list of all the children in his district within the school 
ages, and with military precision he calls that roll and marks 
the absentees daily. There are also in the larger towns 
higher seminaries, such as we call normal schools, academies, 
colleges, and universities — which are free to those who choo?e 
to resort to them and to provide their own books. I should 
have said that in all the schools the pupils who are able to 
do so, provide their own books — the poor are supplied at the 
public expense. 

At Neufchatel — Novum Ca&trum — we were compelled to 
wait a few hours for the diligence to Bienne, where we 
should intersect the line from Berne to Basle. This short 
period I embraced in hastily looking through the little old 
town. It is situated on the shore from which it rises up 
the hillside. It has its old part and its new part. The 
new is modern in style as well as new in time, and the old 
is ancient, dilapidated, and venerable — sometimes quaint and 
odd. There is the old chateau of the exploded princes, and 
the old cathedral of the Catholic religion, both wholly 
perverted from their original purpose — for graves and mon- 



NEUFCHATEL. 419 

uments are all that are left of the princes, and the simple 
forms of the Reformed Church have taken the place of 
the Roman ceremonies — the arches of the old temple 
echo only to the severe doctrines of the Reformation, and 
before it stands the monumental stone of the fierce, fearless, 
and fanatical reformer, William Farel, the contemporary 
and friend of Calvin. His success as a preacher was great 
— his intense zeal and boldness, in the midst of his enemies, 
while hostile swords were flashing around him — did not 
permit even those who hated him, to doubt his sincerity or 
to deny his power. 

Some of the suburban villas and houses are in themselves 
very fine, and in situation and outlook they are exceedingly 
beautiful. On the borders of the lake the view is charming, 
for the Alpine chain, one hundred miles distant, seems to 
form the eastern shore of the lake — but from the higher 
ground of the castle and the cathedral, the Alps seemed to 
rise, in the distance, to their appropriate majesty. As the 
morning sun rose in the heavens, and tipped peak after 
peak with silver, you can imagine how striking it must be, 
and always how beautiful, even to those who look upon it 
every day. 

Our route to Basle was by Sonceboz, Tavannes, Malleray, 
and the Munsterthal — Moutiers-Grand-Val. Several cas- 
cades of the most beautiful and romantic character are 
on this route, and here, through this celebrated valley, was 
the only place in Switzerland where I saw anything from 
which I could suppose had been taken the name of the 
Saxon Switzerland, of which I gave some account in a let- 
ter from Dresden, The rocky cliffs and precipices of 
columnar structure, which we passed, more than anything 
else, reminded us of the banks of the Elbe, although really 
there was no great resemblance, and the rocky beds of the 
stream, in wild, deep, and ragged ravines and gorges, had no 



420 BASLE. 

parallel that I saw in Saxony. Here and there an old 
castle helped to diversify the landscape and make it more 
suggestive and agreeable. 

We have thus traversed the length and breadth of Swit- 
zerland, from Lindau, by Zurich, through that vast valley 
lying between the Bernese Oberland on our left, and the 
Jura on our right — to Geneva and Chamouni, and then 
again from Chamouni, in the south, by Neufchatel and 
Bienne, and the Munsterthal, to Basle, in the north. We 
have not seen the greatest and most wonderful sights of the 
country. We did not climb Mont Blanc, nor yet the 
Rhigi, nor the Col de Baume, nor the Tete Noire, nor any 
of the great summits, to look outward and down upon those 
beautiful sublimities which call so many to visit those 
Alpine regions. The weather was unpropitious for such 
excursions — but we had many opportunities to look up to 
all those mountains of snow and ice, which the summer 
sun has never melted, and which we might suppose formed 
a portion of the sights at which the sons of God shouted for 
joy among the morning stars of the creation. And the 
glaciers — I never had any clear idea of them till I saw them. 
They seem like frozen rivers in the Alpine valleys. Masses 
of ice, that seem in fact to be great river torrents, twenty- 
five, seventy-five, and five hundred feet deep, frozen, in an 
instant, into a solid mass of ice, and even now by melting 
below, by the warmth of the earth, a little stream ripples 
out from below, and the superincumbent mass of ice creeps 
slowly a few inches a year down the hill — resting its lower 
mass sometimes on the cultivated plains, among the green 
fields, at the foot of the mountain, and giving its chilly 
shudder to the farmer-peasant, at his summer labor among 
his harvests, and giving him, to drink, its melted ice, which 
fastens upon him the loathsome goitre. 

Basle — Basilea — is our last resting-place in Switzerland, 



ERASMUS HOLBEIN. 421 

and nowhere can one rest more at his ease than at the spa- 
cious, convenient, and finely kept hotel of the Three Kings, 
where we stopped. The hotel fronts on a small triangular 
public place, and in the rear it has another fine front on the 
bank of the Khine. Its long and noble balconies, into 
which you step from the dining-room and the reading-room, 
overhang the river, in full view of the bridge, seven hun- 
dred feet long connecting the two parts of the city, which 
lies on both sides of the river. It has ten parlors, and two 
hundred bedrooms — a fine reading-room, and a chapel for 
English divine service — all fitted up with much style and 
elegance. 

Basle has long been a principal city, although not a large 
one. Four or five hundred years ago, war, pestilence, and 
earthquake, in rapid succession, desolated it, but soon there- 
after, as a free city, it rose rapidly into importance. Situated, 
as it is, on the spot where the Bhine, after winding and leap- 
ing through Alpine defiles, and gliding with a gentle current 
through the beautiful Boden sea — Constance — and dash- 
ing down its last precipice at Schaflfhausen, takes a 
short turn, and in a straightforward and business way, 
sets out through the great valley between the Blackforest 
and the Vosgian mountains, on its way to the North Sea — 
a great thoroughfare for Eastern France and Western Ger- 
many. It has been the seat of one great ecumenical council of 
the Boman Catholic church, and of several treaties of peace 
between the great powers of Europe. Tire Spanish treaty, 
from negotiating which, Godoy received his title of the 
Prince of Peace, was negotiated here. From being the 
seat of a Boman Catholic bishopric, it has become a Pro- 
testant city, and it has been a great seat of learning, and the 
birth-place and residence, and burial-place of great men — 
among whom Erasmus and Hans Holbien stand pre-eminent, 
and the memorials of them are cherished with great care. 



422 DANSE BIACABRE. 

There is here, in the library, a copy of the Praise of Folly, 
illustrated with pen-sketches by Holbein, in the margin. 
Holbein was born here, but died in England, where Henry 
Eighth said of him, " I can, if I please, make seven lords of 
seven ploughmen, but I cannot make one Holbein even of 
seven lords." Many of his works are here. Erasmus was 
buried here, in the cathedral, which we could not enter, it 
being closed for repairs. He was contemporary with Luther, 
and himself a reformer, but had neither the zeal nor the 
boldness for a leader, and his cautious self-preservation — 
which kept him away from danger — was not a little cen- 
sured, but he said frankly that he had not the gift of mar- 
tyrdom. He had not really any relish for the radical and 
revolutionary reforms of Luther. 

Basle is now a Protestant city — the old Catholic cathe- 
dral is a Protestant church. It is ancient, odd, and quaint, 
in its outside look. The university, once so deservedly 
eminent, has dwindled to a handful of students. Its library 
is the best in Switzerland, and contains much that is curious. 
Here are preserved the remaining fragments of the Danse 
Macabre, or Dance of Death, sometimes attributed to Hol- 
bein, but really of an earlier period, though retouched and 
greatly improved by him. The whole series was painted on 
a wall of a cemetery, which was destroyed fifty years ago, 
and only fragments are preserved. These sermons in paint- 
ing or sculpture have been found in cemeteries all over 
Europe. The oldest was that of Minden, in Westphalia, 
about five hundred years old. There was one in Paris in the 
year 1424 — there is one at Dresden, a hundred years later — 
but this at Basle was the most celebrated of all, uniting 
more fully, and exhibiting more forcibly, the most beautiful 
and solemn morality — the most biting satire, the most 
genial raillery, and the most genuine wit. The idea — every- 
where the same, although very differently treated — is to 



THE APPROACH OF DEATH. 423 

exhibit the approach of Death to all classes of mankind — in 
a great series, constantly varied in characteristic attitude 
and expression, like the scenes of a dance. Each is accom- 
panied by verses, which sharpen the wit and point the 
moral. The higher classes — the popes — the kings — the gen- 
erals — the professional men — are the subject for satire and 
wit, while in the humbler walks of life is exhibited a more 
touching and beautiful solemnity. The grim master of 
ceremonies tells his Holiness that there is no dispensation or 
indulgence for him. Armed cap-a-pie, he defies the hero 
to his last fight. He tells the lawyer that he can make no 
more delays. He offers his own dry and rattling skeleton 
to the medical man, for his last course of anatomy. As 
the poor blind beggar passes an open grave, Death cuts the 
string by which he is led, and takes hold of his staff to 
guide his steps aside. The artist stands with palette and 
pencil in hand, while a young Death grinds his colors, and 
old Death, with a garland on his brow, touches him on the 
shoulder and beckons him away. He snatches up and 
shoulders the spit with the roasting joint upon it, seizes by 
the wrist the fat cook, with napkin and spoon in hand, and 
leads him off with a manifest feeling of property in him. 
The whole has a point and expression, in each case adapted 
to the particular subject, which would seem impossible, in 
the frame and fleshless bones of a mere skeleton. 

Basle is a German city in appearance, and the German is 
the language spoken. It contains about twenty-five thou- 
sand people, mostly protestants. From the high ground on 
which the cathedral stands, near the river, the view of the 
town, the river and the bridge, is good. From the bridge 
the view up and down the Rhine and its shores, including 
both portions of the city, is exceedingly various and beauti- 
ful. 



THE RHINE FROM BASLE TO THE SEA. 

STKASBURG— Stratohurgum— was called by the. Ro- 
mans Argentoratum, and by them written in Greek 
Apx eVT0 ? a i which is somewhat suggestive of the consonant 
sounds of the two languages. It is a large and famous 
city, situated on the river III, in latitude ASh°. The 111 
divides the city into many parts, united by fine bridges. It 
is a city of France, but is really a German city — German 
in its appearance and architecture, and German in its lan- 
guage and costume. It contains about seventy-five thou- 
sand people, one third of whom are protestants. There 
is besides a garrison of several thousand soldiers. In a 
military point of view, it is an exceedingly strong place. 
By means of sluices it can be made unapproachable, 
by being flooded. The gates are shut at night, after which 
there is no going out or coming in. We took our quarters 
at the hotel La Fleur, which boasts of having entertained 
Napoleon I, in the days of his glory. It was the head- 
quarters of Louis Napoleon's partisans in 1836, and is now 



THE CATHEDRAL. 425 

a tolerable hotel. The city has several fine public places. 
The Parade platz, a military square, in which is a bronze 
statue of General Kleber, who was a native of this city, and 
of whom they may well be proud. His great military 
ability and success, united with great kindness and justice, 
made his character one of the highest excellence. There is 
also the Guttenberg platz — Guttenberg square — so called 
from the noble statue of Guttenberg, the inventor of the 
art of printing, by David. He was a native of Mentz — 
Mayence — but in Strasburg he made his invention of the art 
of printing, and this city enjoys the glory of being the first 
place in which printing, by movable types, was put in prac- 
tice. 

In one of the streets here is shown the spot where — five 
hundred years ago — two thousand Jews were burned up in 
a bonfire, like the holocaust at Chillon — being charged with 
having caused the plague by poisoning the wells and foun- 
tains. After that, for centuries, no Jew was allowed to 
live within the city. They were allowed to remain and 
traffic during the day, but at evening, by a public signal, 
every one was compelled to quit for the night. Now they 
have within the walls a magnificent s} r nagogue, and reside 
there in large numbers, enjoying wealth and respectability. 
This is but one of the indications of the general drift of the 
world toward that tolerant and charitable religious faith and 
practice, taught by the Master, and which in the end 
will make the lion and the lamb lie down together. 

The celebrated cathedral of Strasburg is one of the finest 
and most elaborate in Europe. We were careful to time 
our visit to it at high noon, for then the world-renowned 
clock makes its most remarkable manifestation. It is within 
the church. In a quiet and every-day way it constantly 
and visibly records the hour of the day, the day of the week, 
the day of the month, the rising and setting of the sun, the 



426 PATE DE FOIE GRAS. 

phases of the moon, the signs of the Zodiac, and at the hour 
a cherub strikes the bell, and another turns an hour-glass. 
Death strikes twice, and an old man comes out and strikes 
once with his crutch and hobbles on, a child then comes 
out and stands till the next hour. At twelve, noon, the 
twelve apostles come out, and pass the Savior, and bow to 
him, and pass away, and a cock crows three times. This 
clock was made by a wealthy and ingenious citizen of Stras- 
burg, with many years' labor, and was presented to the city 
and set up in the cathedral. It is as great a wonder of in- 
genious complication as it is of inutility. It is his monument. 
In a cuiiet corner of the church is a little unpretentious 
stone statue of Edwin of Steinbach, the architect of the 
masterly temple, which he seems to be surveying with a 
master's eye, while, perhaps, from his unobserved retreat he 
listens to the admiration of the spectators. 

The spire of the minster is the highest in Europe, being 
about thirty feet higher than St. Peter's at Rome. Its pro- 
portions are beyond the reach of criticism. Its effect is worthy 
of a temple to the Christian God, and the marvellous tracery 
and fret-work, the carving, the chiselling, the open work, the 
laces — all of stone — are miraculous. While it seems to be a 
great heavenly temple of lace, it seems also none the less an 
imperishable pile of stone, reared by human genius and con- 
secrated to God. It is itself more than nine hundred years 
old — being the successor of older ones. The view of it by 
the inner light, the stained windows, the lofty columns, the 
font, the pulpit, the choir, the high altar, the tombs, the 
composite effect, are all in keeping with the architecture. 
It is three hundred and fifty-five feet long, one hundred 
and thirty-two feet broad, and the spire is four hundred and 
thirty-seven and a half feet high — French feet. 

We ordered — as a side dish for our dinner — one of the 
Strasburg pies — pate clefoie gras — so famous throughout the 



STRASBURG CELEBRITIES. 427 

eating world — that Ave might eat one here in the place of their 
invention. We did not see that they were different in any- 
excellent quality from those which reach our "Western 
World. Those pies, as all the world knows, are made of the 
diseased liver of the goose. The poor animal, with his feet 
nailed fast to a plank, is placed before a hot fire and cram- 
med with food, and deprived of drink. This treatment soon 
gives the bird a morbid appetite and a bad liver complaint. 
The liver grows to an enormous size — sometimes even to the 
weight of three pounds — when the goose is killed and its 
diseased liver is made into a pie to gratify the delicate palates 
and pampered appetites of the luxurious. This cruel treatment 
of the goose I have seen denied, but the following paragraph 
which I translate from the Almanack des Gourmands — gives 
at the same time a history and the poetry of the process — 

" But that which entitles the goose to the gratitude of true 
epicures, and which gives her a very high rank among the 
winged tribes, are those livers from which are made, at 
Strasburg, those admirable pies, which are the greatest lux- 
ury of side dishes. To procure these livers of a proper 
size, the animal itself is sacrificed. Crammed with food, 
deprived of drink, and fastened near a hot fire — nailed by 
its feet to a board — it must be confessed this goose passes a 
life miserable enough. It would be, indeed, an inhuman tor- 
ture for her if she were not consoled by the idea of the lot 
which awaits her. But this prospect makes her bear her 
troubles with fortitude, and when she thinks that her liver 
— grown larger than she herself and larded with truffles — 
shall go in that masterly pie, and bear through Europe the 
glory of her name, she resigns herself to her fate, and does 
not allow a tear to start." 

The four masterpieces of genius of Strasburg — the 
mechanical clock, the pate de foie gras, the cathedral, the 
art of printing ! how they all represent classes of men — 



12S JOHN GFUTTENBERG. 

— aims of ambition — paths to fame "Who can fail to bo 
forced to the reflections which are suggested by them? 
Years of time devoted, by one man of great ability, to uselesfl 
labor, to produce a useless and complicated contrivance for 
the mere sake of producing it — showing that it could be 
done. By another, the most barbarous and incredible cruelty 
to animals is made the basis of an invention, only for the 
purpose of ministering a dainty morsel to a fastidious appe- 
tite. "While a third devotes a life of genius to fitly raising 
harmoniously stone upon stone of that great temple of reli- 
gion, with its lofty spire, age after age, and age alter age, 
to point the soul to the cross, and through it to heaven. 
There Erwin of Steinbach forever, after his body shall have 
mouldered to dust beneath the pavement that he laid, shall 
still preach in this place, his great sermon, till, in the last 
earthquake, the minster shall be a part of the last ruin, or per- 
haps, be deemed worthy to remain as a place to worship God 
after the final change — if, as some suppose, " the new 
heavens and the new earth" are but to be the present heavens 
and earth purified and glorified. And the fourth discovers 
and labors to perfect the art of all arts — the art of diffusing 
knowledge — the art of universal education — the art by which 
he who has anything to say worth saying, may say it to all the 
world. Four hundred years ago John Guttenbcrg died at 
threescore. We sometimes say of the dead that they only 
sleep, but Guttenbcrg is neither dead nor asleep. Go to the 
great libraries— millions of books in every language — the more 
numerous millions of books afloat, and books of instruction, 
and public journals. Go to London, to Paris, to Leipsic, to 
New-York, to Printing-house square, to every composing 
room, to every press — from the oldest Kamage to the latest 
Hoe's Double Power Press — Guttenbcrg is at the bottom 
of the whole of it. He was never so active as now. The 
compositor does not put a single letter in his stick, without a 



BADEN-BADEN. 429 

bow — docs he not bow to single-type Guttenberg ? That 
man with his sleeves rolled up and standing before his little 
furnace in the foundry, with a matrix in his hand — how he 
pours in the metal, tosses up his matrix, and drops from it 
a single type at a time — is he not Guttenberg himself? 
Clock, and pate, and religion, and literature, and science, 
»nd art, and politics, all look to Guttenberg as their herald 
and glorifier. He of all men deserves a statue. It should 
be of gold. 

I saw here, for the first time, teams of cattle — cows — 
driven with reins, bridles, and bits — which seemed to me a 
great oddity. 

An hour or two from Strasburg brought us to the cele- 
brated watering-place, Baden-Baden — properly Baden, but 
called Baden-Baden to distinguish it from other places of 
the same name in Switzerland and elsewhere. As the Swiss 
Baden was called by the Romans Thermae superiores, this 
was called Therrnce inferiores — these waters being also 
warmer and farther south. The little city or village is 
beautifully situated among the hills, and is exceedingly 
beautiful in itself, and in all its appointments and surround- 
ings. We took lodgings at the Hotel de l'Europe — a 
spacious hotel, looking most agreeably upon the public 
grounds and public buildings — much like a hotel at an 
American watering place, with a spacious dining-room, where, 
at a grand table (T/iote, the guests assemble for dinner. 

The public grounds are aside from the town, from which 
they are separated by a little stream, which, clear as crystal, 
runs rapidly between walled banks, and contributes its 
share to the beauty of the landscape. On these public 
grounds are the public spa-buildings, and all about the 
grounds are showy shops, evidently occupied only during 
the " season" — dry-goods shops of every variety, and old 
curiosity shops and new curiosity shops abounding, especially 



430 THE SPA-BUILDINGS. 

in carving in wood, and ivory, and bone, and brick, here of 
exquisite skill in workmanship, and taste in form and pattern 
— walks and drives in every direction, and of every variety of 
beauty, from the quiet dell and the charming valley to 
the rocky ravine and mountain cliff, and frowning and top* 
pling ruins of castles, old as the dark ages. 

The public spa-buildings are the new Trinkhalle — drink» 
ing house or pumproom — and the Conversation Haus, or 
society house. The pumproom is over the hot springs, 
whose waters are drunk from a fountain that rises in the 
centre of a large hall, where all resort to drink — the waters 
are also carried in pipes to the various bathing-rooms. The 
water is of a temperature about one hundred and fifty degrees. 
It is clear, smells like a kind of broth, and has a saltish taste. 
The Trinkhalle hall is open from five to twelve a. m. — with 
a fine band of music from half-past six to eight — and from 
five to seven in the evening. 

The building is two hundred and seventy feet long and 
thirty-six broad, with a front colonnade of sixteen Corinth- 
ian columns. The effect is noble and beautiful. The 
ceiling is painted in fresco, with scenes from the many 
legends which the German mind have invented connect- 
ed with the various localities in the neighborhood, and there 
are also some excellent sculptures. 

The Conversation Haus, and the after-dinner prome- 
nades, and lounges, and music, on the public square, are the 
great features of the place — for here are exhibited the fashion 
and the fashionable vice of the place. The Conversation 
Haus is a great dancing and gambling house. There is 
dancing three times a week, twice in the morning dress, and 
Saturday in full dress. There is a theatre, a restaurant, 
library, and a reading-room connected with it. There is a 
room for roulette, and a room for rouge ct noir — a grand room 
also for spectators — two dressing rooms — a hall of cards, for 



GAMBLERS. 431 

card playing — a hall of reunion for dancing and general 
social intercourse, with pianos, &c. — all furnished with 
royal magnificence, and every object multiplied by large 
mirrors. 

It is let out by the government to a company with the 
exclusive privilege of gambling tables, at a rent of thirty 
thousand dollars a year ! Here — in those gambling houses 
thronged with players, sometimes for the deepest stakes, 
— this maddening sport is kept up day and night — open to 
all that choose to stand by and see the sport go on. The 
gamblers are seated around a table perhaps five and twenty 
feet long, and four or five feet wide, loaded with rouleaus 
and piles of gold. Not a word is spoken — silent and grave 
— almost solemn — men and women are there — patrician 
and plebeian — one puts down a ducat, another a Napoleon, 
another a hundred or a thousand, and the play goes on with- 
out interruption, without even a lull in its activity — all you 
see is, each putting down his money on his favorite spot — 
the hazard of the play is cast, and with an unerring eye and 
hand, quick as thought, the banker with his little silver 
shovel, slides out upon the table his losses to the winner, and 
with his little silver rake, draws into the bank, from all 
parts of the table, the losses of the players. This is repeated 
every minute during the live-long day and night. A player 
leaves his seat and another takes it, and no one asks or 
thinks whether he left to return — whether richer or poorer 
— whether desperate or buoyant — whether he be gone to 
dinner, or to bed, or to blow out his brains. 

From Baden-Baden to Frankfort-on-the-main by rail 
— with only the usual railway stoppages — gave us little 
opportunity to note any more than the obvious beauties and 
topography of this interesting portion of the Rhenish coun- 
tries — Heidelberg with its associations, and sights, its 
ancient and famous university, and its battered and ruined 



432 FRANKFORT HOCKHEIM. 

castle — Manheim, beautiful to look upon, and Darmstadt, 
which also would have well repaid a longer and more 
appreciative look, and Mayence, lying in quiet and majestic 
beauty. Large fields of poppies, as a regular crop — which 
we passed frequently through the day — were a novelty to us, 
and being now in full bloom, they gave a gay and flashy 
appearance to the landscape. 

Frankfort, the capital city of the German confederation, 
and the residence of many ambassadors, is a place of note — 
historically — for more than a thousand years, and of much 
beauty. The new part of the town has a fresh and modern 
look, and all the style and finish of a first-class city of to- 
day, while the old part, with its narrow streets and houses of 
projecting gables, look as though it had been built before the 
flood. I hardly know where we bave seen a city drive 
more beautiful and distinguished than through the best parts 
of modern Frankfort. The residences of the foreign ministers, 
of the rich merchants, and bankers, and politicians — which 
are numerous — are in every sense worthy of their position 
and wealth. The monuments and statues — the public 
places and public buildings — the Paul's place — the Theatre 
place — the Parade place — the old cathedral five hundred 
years old — St. Paul's Church — the Palace of the Diet — the 
exchange — the town-house — the museum, and galleries, and 
library, are all well worth the observation of the traveller. 

A few minutes in the cars took us from Frankfort to 
Wiesbaden — passing Ilockheira, where the celebrated 
Rhenish wine, Hockheimer — called Hock for brevity — is 
manufactured in the greatest perfection. Indeed that par- 
ticular wine is made nowhere else. The vineyards cover 
the whole land, but the best wine is made from a little tract 
of eight acres, which is of enormous value. There are 
four thousand vines to an acre, and each vine is worth two 
dollars. 



WIESBADEN. 433 

Wiesbaden is an older and moi'e thronged watering-place 
than Baden-Baden — having some seasons twenty thousand 
visitors — but far inferior in style and rank of company and in 
the luxury of furniture and other appointments. The city 
is much larger than Baden-Baden. It is the capital of the 
Duchy of Nassau, and the residence of the Duke. The streets 
are wide and finely built. It is said that almost every house 
is a hotel, or boarding-house, or lodging-house. The Kur- 
saal is the great public place of entertainment. There is 
the roulette, and rouge et noir, and cards, and dancing, and 
conversation — there is a grand table d'hote, for several hun- 
dred persons. Then in front of the Kursaal is a spacious 
promenade, on two sides of which are the shops for curiosi- 
ties and fancy goods — then in the rear is the garden with 
tables and seats, and the refectory, and light refreshments, 
the ices, and creams, and drinks. It was the height of the 
season, and all these places were crowded with people of all 
ranks and conditions, yet with no rank and no precedence, 
but mingling, if possible, more democratically and equally 
than we do at our watering-places. 

The Drinkhall here — instead of being a palace like 
that of Baden-Baden — is a shanty with an awning covering, 
under which is a large sort of well or basin, some ten or 
twelve feet across — the water boils hot and steamy like a pot. 
Each drinker comes at the proper time for drinking the 
water, brings with him his own tumbler or cup, and fills it at 
the well, and then walks slowly and cautiously away, or 
back and forth, holding it in hand with great care, as 
though he were afraid of losing a drop, and sips it till it 
gets cool, and then drinks it. There are many invalids 
here, and the scene about the well is exceedingly odd. The 
poor and the rich — buxom youth and tottering age — 
and decrepitude and sickness, all meeting in democratic 
equality — and one with his plain cup — another with his 

19 



434 GAMBLING. 

common tumbler — another with rich gold and silver — 
another with costly Bohemian glass — all so carefully and 
steadily walking back and forth to cool the broth by mere 
lapse of time — a very odd scene. 

The gambling-room is plainer and more thronged with 
mere spectators. Besides those seated at the table we noticed 
that often the mere spectator of the game — the bumpkin 
who has brought his chickens to market and the fashionable 
miss in her teens — half in sport and half with a serious 
desire to see whether they might not be lucky — put down a 
coin larger or smaller, and the little rake or little shovel 
of the banker in a moment reveals the truth of the result. 
Perhaps I should say that such was the force of temptation 
and the contagion of example, that almost all who came to 
the room, before leaving, sported, for once or twice, a small 
stake. 

The delusions of gamblers are inexplicable. It is not 
easy to see how in games of skill the loser should hope at 
last to win against the same adversaries, for repeated defeats 
should be considered as establishing a real inferiority. And 
in games like those of cards, in which skill and chance are 
combined, how men play on against what they call a run of 
bad luck, in the apparent certainty that the luck must change! 
whereas the run of such result shows that there are causes at 
work — whether skill or chance — which they do not perceive, 
and which render such results continually probable—and in 
games of mere chance, when thei'e is no antagonist but fate — 
when gaming is but a mere bet on a throw of dice — a roll of a 
ball — a whirl of a table — or any event which is fortuitous — 
why should men notsee in their ill-luck, the evidence that some 
law of the game — some inevitable tendency — some constant 
discrimination is working against them ? How can a sane 
man believe that one of two independent throws should in- 
fluence the other? The throws of to-night are no more 



WARM SPRINGS. 435 

dependent upon or influenced by each other, than they are 
dependent upon and influenced by the throws before the 
flood. Every time the dice are thrown, and every time the 
ball is rolled, is a new and independent adventure — none the 
less likely to be this or that, than if the previous one had never 
happened. In all those public games when you play against 
the bank, the chances are always against you, and it is that 
which is their gain and your loss — so that the bank is ready 
to play against all the world, and inevitably gets rich, under 
a rent of thirty thousand dollars a year. 

These watering-places in Europe are almost without 
number. One might spend almost a life in visiting them and 
not go to any one more than one season — and almost all of 
them have warm or hot waters, of various temperatures — 
indicative, I suppose, always of volcanic origin — yet where 
is the volcano? — where are the spiracles of these subterranean 
forces ? — where are the furnaces that heat these boiling 
currents in every direction bubbling up from the lowest 
depths'? .ZEtna, and Vesuvius, and Hecla, all are on the 
margins of different seas, and separated by the width of the 
Continent — from Italy to Iceland. Are they the chimneys of 
the same great fire over which Europe is but a crust, through 
which ascend these healing waters ? — The volcanoes that 
were smothered before recorded history or tradition, and are 
only known by their traces — the seven hills — the highest 
mountains of the Rhine — are volcanic — are they still active 
in their depths? and will they again burst forth — or will 
they sleep till that final day when the elements shall melt — 

" And like a parched and shrivelled scroll 
The flaming heavena together roll ?" 

From Wiesbaden a run of a few minutes on the rail 
brought us to Biberich, to take the steamer to Rotterdam. 
Our steamer was reasonably well appointed, and our 



436 JOHANNISBERG. 

progress comfortably fast, even for Americans. The view 
from the deck — where we spent our time — was a rapidly 
moving panorama of shifting scenes — the first few miles of 
the river being full of islands — then came the peculiar 
scenery of the Khine, which it is quite impossible to com- 
pare with anything in our country, for all the elements of 
the scene are quite unknown to us. What first attracted 
our attention was the estate of Prince Metternich — Johan- 
nisberg — where is produced the most famous and expen- 
sive wine of Europe. There is the castle or mansion, 
which is not ancient nor ruined — there is the vineyard of 
seventy acres — a peculiar kind of grape — a peculiar soil — 
a peculiar treatment — the grapes being allowed to hang till 
they are nearly decayed. The vineyard is divided into 
small parcels, and the wine kept separate, as differing in 
value. The vineyard sometimes yields a profit of two 
thousand dollars, and the wine sometimes sells, at the vine- 
yard, at five dollars a bottle by the quantity — George IV. 
and the King of Prussia bought at about that price, and 
divided their purchase between them. 

The river here becomes much narrower than it is at 
Johannisberg, where is, perhaps, its greatest width — say 
two thousand feet — here it is but little more than half that. 
It would be vain, in letters like these, to attempt any detailed 
description of the river and its banks — High lands, in every 
variety of form and structure, rise up from the river on 
each side — covered with vineyards, terraces, and trellises, 
and castles, and ruins, and forts. And forts, and ruins, and 
rocks, and castles, and churches, and vineyards, and beauti- 
ful fields, and thrifty towns, and bridges of boats that open 
to let you pass, and rope-boat ferries — called flying-bridges 
— too numerous to name — present themselves in constant 
succession and alternation, keeping the eye and the mind 
in constant transition from one old novelty to another. 



THE ROBBERS OF THE RHINE. 437 

The robbers of the Rhine are dead, and their castles are 
in ruins, and we were sailing down between their graves. 
The robbers of the Rhine — how easy it is to call names. 
They only levied duties on the commerce that passed that way 
— their castles were custom-houses. There were thirty-two 
of them in the middle ages. They were collectors, and had 
their tide waiters, and night inspectors, and revenue cutters 
— which they wore at their sides in a scabbard — their duties 
were ad valorem or specific, by a sliding scale, always slid- 
ing upward, or in any direction in which they would pro- 
duce the most revenue — theirs was strictly a revenue tariff. 
They were robbers — what are we Avho seize by the throat 
— figuratively — every merchant that brings us what we 
want, and will not let his goods pass till he has paid us a 
tribute of often one third their value ? 

We had among our fellow passengers an English lady. 
Like us she had been to Italy, and among her souvenirs de 
voyage she showed us in a box some pet turtles, which she 
had fed and cared for all the way from Venice. They were 
only about two inches long — dear little loves which she 
worshipped ! I suggested to her to complete a family of pets, 
by adding some spiders and lobsters, but she evidently was 
not disposed to divide her affections, or withdraw them from 
her turtles. 

The only stops, to go ashore, that we made were at 
Cologne, Colonia Agrippina, and Dusseldorf, the seat of the 
justly celebrated modern school of painting. We stopped 
at Cologne, and went by rail to Dusseldorf, by which we 
saved an hour, to look at Dusseldorf, which otherwise we 
might have passed in the boat. At both these places there 
is a bridge of boats, which opens like a draw, to allow the 
commerce of the Rhine to pass. This commerce is carried 
on by the means of tow boats, or tugs, which drag along 
immense tows, like those on the Hudson. On one of these 



438 COLOGNE. 

boat-bridges we passed from Cologne to Deutz, to take the 
cars for Dusseldorf. 

Modern commerce has renovated Cologne. New, and 
broad, and beautiful streets, have been opened, sometimes to 
take the place of old German houses, such as those in the 
ancient part of the town, which give it still the appearance 
of an ancient city. It is an ancient city. We do not know 
how old it was at the beginning of our era. There are many 
Roman remains here which establish its antiquity. Its 
name — Cologne — is but an abbreviation of its Roman name, 
Colonia Agrippina. In the middle ages — five hundred to 
seven hundred years ago — it was called the Rome of the 
north. It had a church for every day in the year — three 
hundred and sixty-five. Now, there are twenty. It had 
two thousand five hundred priests, and more than five thou- 
sand beggars. Then it had its persecutions, that drove 
away its most industrious, enterprising, and thrifty inhabi- 
tants, by thousands, thus inflicting a double injury on them- 
selves, first, by diminishing, absolutely and fatally, their own 
numbers and resources, and next, by building up and 
strengthening the neighboring cities, which welcomed, with 
open arms, the exiles from their infatuated rival. 

This suicidal course, with its consequences, arrested the 
construction of its wonderful cathedral, which, finished on its 
original plan, would be, if it be not now — less than half done — 
the most remarkable and perfect specimen of Gothic archi- 
tecture in the world — exhibiting more fully than any other 
specimen the flexibility, adaptability, and infinite variety of 
that great style of architecture, which the more I see of it, 
the more excites my admiration. It is now six hundred 
years since this church was commenced, and it is not the 
least singular fact connected with it, that the name of the 
architect who planned and laid its foundations, and superin- 
tended its early progress, is entirely unknown. They name 



TIIE CATHEDRAL. 439 

one Gerhard as the master-builder, who took charge after 
one hundred years of labor had been devoted to it by his 
predecessors, and his name is all that is known of him. It 
is in the form of a cross, five hundred and eleven feet long, 
and two hundred and eighty-one feet wide. Its twin tow- 
ers and spires were to be five hundred feet high — much 
higher than any other in Europe. One of them is only 
begun, and the other has risen to about one hundred and 
sixty feet, and on its top now stands the crane, or derrick, 
used centuries ago, to raise up the materials from below. It 
has stood there ever since. I say ever since — it is said, 
however, that it was once taken down, but a thunder storm, 
which happened soon after, and frightened the people, was 
attributed to this taking down of the venerable derrick, or 
crane — so it was carefully restored to its place. The effect 
of that crane up there, on the top of the unfinished 
tower, and relieved against the sky, connected with its cen- 
turies of idleness, is peculiar. In this tower is the great 
bell, of twenty-five thousand pounds, which requires twelve 
men to ring it. 

To support the arches of the body of the church, includ- 
ing the portico, are one hundred columns, each surmounted 
by a different chapiter. The four columns in the middle are 
each thirty feet in circumference. Within the church, 
aloft, are the timbers and scaffolding, placed there ages ago, 
but below are tombs, and altars, and statues, and chapels, 
and shrines, and pictures, including behind the grand altar, 
the chapel of the three kings, or magi who worshipped the 
Savior, and here are now preserved their bones, as relics of 
the greatest value and sanctity. I was so ignorant that I 
had never before known the names of these three wise men 
who, having seen the star in the East, came to worship the 
infant Messiah. I did not even know that their bones were 
preserved — but here you see their names inscribed in rubies 



440 KUBENS. 

on the place of their skulls. You may be as ignorant as I 
was, and I therefore send you their names — Gaspar, Mel- 
choir, and Balthazar. Their shrine is among the richest in 
Europe, estimated to have treasures worth one million two 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 

The appearance and effect of. the exterior is wonderful. 
The cathedral at Strasburg seemed to be made of lace — this 
seems more like a temple of the grandest proportions, and 
of the noblest and richest architecture, to which the carv- 
ings, open work and tracery on its buttresses and spires, 
and pinnacles, give the effect of a rich veil of lace, thrown 
over the whole, and hanging in long parallel folds. 

They are at work at it now with considerable activity. 
I inquired how many men were employed, and was told 
about two hundred and fifty, and to my question, how long 
it would take to finish it, was answered, if they had the 
necessary means to go on with it, as fast as practicable, it 
might be completed in fifty years. It is estimated that the 
cost of finishing it will be about four millions of dollars — 
about half that sum has been expended upon it within the 
last fifty years. There is a Cologne-cathedral-building-asso- 
ciation, with branches throughout the continent, to collect 
subscriptions for completing what will be, when fully fin- 
ished, almost another wonder of the world, and whose un- 
finished condition has been so long a reproach to those whose 
easy and docile faith finds high religious enjoyment in con- 
templating the monuments and relics, and offerings, and 
legends, which sanctify the magnificent pile. 

Kubens was born here — his mother being at the time not 
a resident, but casually here — and in the church of St. Peter 
is what he considered his best picture, painted just upon his 
death, and presented to this church, in which he was bap- 
tized. It is the celebrated large altar piece of the crucifixion 
of St. Peter, with his head downward. I believe that 



CRUCIFIXION OF ST. PETER. 441 

artists, and those who judge of works of art, rather by the 
rules of art than the effects of nature, find some fault with 
the picture, and criticise some portions of it rather severely — ■ 
to me, however, it was a wonderful picture. I am not at 
all surprised that he should have considered it his best and 
greatest work. The difficulty of the subject, and its strik- 
ing and peculiar character — both of which would recom- 
mend it to Rubens — would be sure to provoke criticism, 
because few — none, indeed — would have studied the subject 
so as to be able to pronounce a reliable judgment upon the 
success of the artist. 

19* 



THE LOW COUNTRIES. 

AT the thrifty little city of Dusseldorf we resumed our 
places in the steamer for Rotterdam. The banks of 
the river are low, with here and there a village — some with 
the ancient look of decrepitude, and some with a look of 
modern life and growing vigor. Arnheim and its suburbs 
are charming specimens of regular, precise, Dutch prettiness. 
All our fellow passengers left the steamer at Arnheim to 
take to the cars, leaving us alone for our voyage on the Rhine, 
through the delta of the Low Countries, which — dull and 
monotonous as it was — was still a novelty to us which we 
were not willing to forego. 

The houses are now of brick, stone being obtained with 
difficulty and expense, and clay for brick being cheap and 
plenty — windmills, in every direction, stretch out their 
brawny arms — for the country is so low that there are no 
running streams for water power, and wind is plenty. From 
the deck of our steamer we looked over the dyke-like banks 
of the river, and could just see the eaves of the houses. It 



ROTTERDAM — DELFT. 443 

is easy to imagine the loss of property and life when the 
river overflows its banks. 

Our first look at Rotterdam was under favorable circum- 
stances. It was the day of a quarter-centennial musical 
festival. Banners, and flags, and streamers, were waving and 
floating from houses and ships. The whole town was 
thronged with strangers — many of them as curious as we, 
and apparently as great strangers. Take away the canals 
through the streets and there is little to distinguish it from 
an American city, in its general appearance. A well-built 
commercial city — the windows are very large, and in many 
of the streets they have mirrors projecting from the wall, 
and so placed as by reflection to offer to the ladies — who 
sit demurely and modestly within their rooms — a full view 
of the street and sidewalk, up and down the street. 

Erasmus was born here, and a fine statue of him in 
bronze, by Henry de Reiser, is worthy of notice as a work 
of art, and as an historical and biographical monument. The 
principal events of his life are recorded in its inscriptions. 
The statue is a little more than two hundred years old. 

From Rotterdam we went to Delft — Delphi — not Delft 
Haven from which the pilgrims of St. Jonathan set sail in 
the May Flower — a little port two miles below Rotterdam — 
but old Delft, famous all over the world for its beautiful 
pottery, till England and China monopolized the market and 
ruined Delft. In Ireland crockeryware is called " Delft," as 
we call porcelain " China." Delft is a dark and solemn old 
place of fifteen or twenty thousand people, well built — two 
or three wide streets, with canals bordered with trees — but 
it has no business. The grass grows literally green and 
fresh among the stones of the carriage-way in the streets, 
and the sleeping waters of the canals are so rarely disturbed 
by a boat, that water-mosses cover the whole surface like a 
carpet. 



444 MONUMENTS. 

We visited the fine " Old church," where are some inter- 
esting monuments — one of Admiral Van Tromp, who won 
more than thirty battles, and after beating the British fleet 
carried a broom at his mast head, to show that he swept 
them from the channel. The battle in which he lost his 
life is sculptured on his tomb, and his epitaph closes, " Tan- 
tum non victor, eerie invictus, vivere et vincere desiit." " Not 
victorious but unvanquished, he at the same time ceased to 
live and to conquer." Another of admiral Peter Hein — 
it was of him — he rose from a fisher boy — that his mother, 
when she heard of his death, in the arms of victory, said — 
" Fiet was always an unlucky dog, I was sure he would 
come to an untimely end." Pie was born at Delft Haven, which 
is the port of Delft. In the " New Church," which stands 
in the public square, we admired the simple and beautiful 
monument to Hugh G-root — Hugo Grotius, the great, and 
the learned, and the good, who was a native of Delft. This 
monument is a medallion head of the publicist, with a child 
leaning on an urn, bearing an inverted torch — the emblem 
of death — with the simple inscription, Ilugoni Grotio 
sacimm. But the greatest object of attraction in the " New 
Church," is the celebrated monument to William I., Prince 
of Orange, who was assassinated here by Girard, an agent 
of Philip II. and of the Jesuits. His life had been often 
before attempted. Some assassins had, on one occasion, 
determined to murder him in his bed in his tent, in which he 
slept with his favorite dog beside him. The faithful pet 
heard the stealthy creep of the murderers and instinctively 
leaped upon the bed, barking loudly and tearing off the 
covering from his master, whom he thus alarmed in time to 
save his life. When the Prince was finally murdered, the 
poor dog starved and pined to death. The monument is 
said not to be exceeded by any piece of sepulchral magnifi- 
cence, of that age, in Europe. On the tomb William's 



THE HAGUE. 445 

statue reclines in full armor, with the sword of the hero, 
and the sceptre of the king, and at his feet is the figure of 
his affectionate dog — while a lavish display of exquisite 
sculpture in the accessories, completes the grand design. 

That we might have an experience of all respectable modes 
of travel, we went from Delft to the Hague in a trekschuit — 
a canal passage-boat — which we found pleasant and conven- 
ient. The boat is about thirty feet long and six feet wide, 
with two cabins — one forward for the baggage and thirty or 
forty second-class passengers, and one in the rear for eight 
or ten first-class passengers. The little boat is towed by 
horses about four miles an hour. These canals are the 
streets and roads — and the houses, villages, and country 
seats are along the canals — and on them, like the common 
highway, you meet all sorts of people with all sorts of loads. 
The market boats, of full size, are sometimes drawn by two 
men instead of horses — tugging along with a strap over the 
shoulders. We noticed one drawn by a man and a dog, the 
dog being leader. There are many beautiful country seals 
between Delft and Hague. Windmills abound and are 
used for power for all sorts of necessary and labor-saving 
machinery — flour mills, snuff mills, pumps, &c, &c, are all 
worked by windmills. 

There are no hills and vales — no running streams — no up 
and down — all flat. At first the novelty of such a country 
was not uninteresting, but it soon became flat in all senses. 
The deck of the trekschuit is not high enough for a good 
view of so flat a country. 

The Hague — Haga Comitis — is a beautiful little city — a 
gem of a capital. Its principal street — the Voorhout — is a 
series of palaces, and its great square — the Vyvenberg — is 
magnificent, with its trees, its basin of water, and its palace, 
and public buildings. 

The picture gallery and the museum are also here. The 



446 PAINTINGS — PALACES. 

gallery is well worth a visit for its fine collection of Dutch art. 
The best artists of the school are here represented by some 
of their best works. The celebrated Bull by Paul Potter, is 
alone sufficient to attract the attention of every traveller, 
and well deserves its fame. The animal itself has all the 
life and fire, all the truth and spirit, of the most perfect 
nature, and the whole picture, in the sky, the landscape, 
and accessories, shows also the hand of a great master. 
The gallery is not very large, but nowhere, I am quite sure, 
can the Dutch school be studied with such advantage as 
here. Rembrandt's Surgeon or Anatomist lecturing to his 
Class from a Dead Subject, which he is dissecting, is a 
wonderful picture. 

The royal library has more than one hundred thousand 
volumes and many curiosities. 

We went through the rooms of the King's Palace. They 
are plain, and neat, and well furnished, but did not seem to 
us very royal — not even very stylish. Parliament being in 
session we took a look at the legislative dignitaries and the 
place of their sittings — an exceedingly respectable-looking 
body, individually and collectively — all their surroundings 
are best characterized as respectable, dignified, appropriate. 
The seats and desks were furnished in plain green broad- 
cloth, except the throne and seats for the princes, which are 
crimson and gold. I heard but one speech. The member 
who was speaking seemed to secure general attention, while 
his manner was a pattern of the deliberate, the quiet, and 
reflective. The room is small and admirably easy to hear 
and, of course, to speak in. 

The Palace in the Wood, or the House in the Wood, is a 
royal rural residence, some two miles from the city, in a wood. 
The grounds are a great place of resort for the people, especi- 
ally on Sundays — only, however, for walks. 
In the palace we first entered the dining room, which was 



SCHEVENINGEN. 447 

painted in fresco in black and white, by Dewitt a hundred 
years ago and more. While the imagination and the taste 
are worthy of the power of that artist, the mere art — the 
imitation — seemed tome to be perfect. I was about to ask my 
courier whether the figures, which I supposed were statues, 
were stucco or marble, when I discovered that they were 
paintings. The ante-chambers are furnished with Chinese 
paper hangings, Dresden porcelain, Japan vases, Gobelin 
tapestries, family portraits, and furniture in gold and yellow. 
The drawing-rooms are furnished throughout — the standing 
furniture, the hangings of the walls, and the curtains — with 
Japan needlework of great richness and beauty — landscapes, 
with birds and fruits, wrought in gold and silver, with the 
greatest truth. These embroideries were presented to the 
grandfather of the present king by the emperor of Japan. 

The ball-room — an octagon room, sixty feet high to the 
dome — is covered on all sides, from the floor to the top of 
the dome, with the finest paintings painted in fresco. Nine 
eminent painters — including Rubens and Jordaens — it is 
said, were twelve years, painting that room at the royal ex- 
pense. The floors are beautifully inlaid, and the room is 
lighted by chandeliers of the greatest richness. The whole 
is a worthy royal summer-house — in its best portions, truly 
magnificent. 

The city receives its supply offish from Scheveling or Sche- 
veningen — a little fishing-place on the North sea, about two 
miles distant. All travellers visit this peculiar little settlement 
which is, at the same time, a fisherman's station and a fash- 
ionable watering-place. It is reached by a beautiful avenue, 
perfectly straight, thickly bordered with oaks and limes. It is 
a little village of some three or four hundred houses, inhab- 
ited by a fishing population — peculiar in custom, in manners, 
and in usages. Between the streets and the water is a dune, 
or sand hill, thrown up by the wind and the waves — such 



448 PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

as are common on the coast of Holland — hiding the water 
from -view till you reach the top, when there opens to view 
— with a surprise which startles you with delight — the 
broad ocean, crowded with fishing craft, and the hard and 
beautiful beach and the curling and foamy shoals, perhaps* 
thronged with bathers, or, perhaps, a heap of fish just being 
sold at auction to the villagers — some of whom get their 
stock at such public sales. 

The Hague is supplied with fish, carried fresh every morn- 
ing, from this place, dressed and cleaned, fit for cooking. 
At the early hour you see the Scheveling fishwomen throng- 
ing to the city, as soon as the citizens are astir, and trav- 
ersing all the streets with their baskets of fish on their 
heads, to be retailed to the housekeepers — they, and the 
baskets, and the fish, all neat to a wonder. So at Schevel- 
ing we were greatly surprised at the marvellous neatness of 
street, and house, and person, and apparel, of old and young 
of both sexes, poor as well as rich — if there be any poor or 
any rich there. 

The public-school house was a beautiful edifice, such as 
would be rarely seen elsewhere in such a village. 

In Holland the public schools are mainly for the poorer 
classes. In the country all goto the same school, but in the 
cities the Jews have their own schools, the Protestants 
theirs, and the Catholics theirs — all, I believe, have 
prayers at opening and closing. They are supported by the 
State. 

The dress of the Scheveling women is a great wonder. 
Only two miles from a fashionable city and a royal court, 
with which communication is constant, half hourly — itself a 
fashionable watering place, and constantly visited by the 
people of the city and by travellers — still, in dress and cos- 
tume, it is as unlike the Hague as it could be, if separated 
from it by the widest ocean and peopled by a different race. 



FACE OF THE COUNTRY. 449 

Their bonnets, and dresses, and aprons, are all peculiar, but 
the greatest peculiarity is the metallic ornament about the 
face — rich according to the condition of the wearer, from 
tin-plate up to gold. It consists of two large planished 
plates, one on each side of the head, on the line of the eyes, 
and projecting out cpjite as far as the line of the face. This 
gives sometimes a brazen-facedness, which is not agreeable, 
but it is quite easy to see that taste may so manage these 
ornaments as to make them harmonize with a graceful head- 
dress and heighten its beauties. 

At JScheveling, Charles II., of England, embarked on his 
return to the throne of his ancestors, to bring back to 
Great Britain the principles which, a few years before, had 
brought his father to the block, and a few years later de- 
prived his brother of the throne — and at Scheveling William 
I., of the Netherlands, landed on his return to the throne of 
his ancestors, refusing, however, to accept the crown unless 
he " should be restrained by a constitution, which should 
guarantee the privileges and liberties of the people and 
secure them from every encroachment." 

From Hague to Amsterdam we passed through the old 
cities Leyden — Lugdunum Batavorum — and Harlem — Har- 
lemium — and the intervening low flats — a country of ditches, 
and swamps, and meadows, skirted with willows and 
alders — altogether common and vulgar in its appearance, 
except here and there a country seat, with true Dutch 
grounds, for a portion of the ten miles between Hague and 
Leyden, and again near Harlem. 

While the general appearance of the country is dull, so 
far as the landscape is concerned, in other respects it is novel 
and interesting. The immense number of windmills enlight- 
ens and enlivens the scene. Don Quixote himself would 
not have dared to face an enemy so formidable in point of 
numbers. The houses are of red brick, with everywhere a 



450 AMSTERDAM. 

remarkable air of neatness, comfort, and industry. Every 
house looks as if it were really a home — an abode of thrift, 
and comfort, and affection. No priests — no beggars — no 
donkeys — no women in the fields at work — flocks and herds 
are abundant — large sheep — cows mostly spotted black and 
white. The common classes of the women are dressed in 
short gowns and petticoats, with aprons tied round the 
waist, and heavy wooden shoes. They are neat and snug, 
and many of them are very bright and pretty in the face 
— in human look and appearance, surpassing those of any 
other country on the continent where we have travelled. 

Amsterdam — Amstelodamum — a fine old city of two 
hundred and twenty-five thousand people — is divided by 
canals into ninety-five islands, united by two hundred and 
ninety bridges. It is built on piles. Erasmus wittily said, 
the people, like crows, live on the tops of trees. The 
canals are wide, and, unlike those of Venice, there is on 
each side a quay, or street, and a side-walk, so that there is 
no travelling in gondolas, but carts and carriages, with the 
usual activity of commerce, bring here the noise which is 
the voice of thrifty and active business. In most of the 
streets the houses are lofty with sharp gables to the street 
— often making considerable pretension to architectural 
ornament. The stores are also good. All the town is neat 
and agreeable to the eye, except the Jews' quarter, which is 
large and very filthy There, in crowded and dirty streets, 
all sorts of tatterdemalionery and chiffonery are sold — 
pressed upon you with almost insulting pertinacity. To the 
nose, the neatness, it is quite another thing. Those broad 
canals filled with stagnant waters are often exceedingly 
offensive, and are always anything but agreeable to the 
smell — and to the many well-defined and distinct smells 
of the canals, are to be added, in the Jews' quarter — 

" The mixed odors — the commingled throng, 
Of salt, and sour, and stale, and strong," 



DIAMOND CUTTING. 451 

■which — to the great scandal of that "peculiar people" — 
are so usual in their quarters. 

The business of diamond-cutting is the great business 
of the Jews here. It is carried on in many large and lofty 
factories — five and six stories in height. They are worked 
by steam power — the stone being cut and polished by dia- 
mond dust — hence the phrase of diamond cut diamond. The 
diamond is cut in three styles — the brilliant, the rose, and 
the table — and it is cut in one or the other style as it will be 
most valuable in the market. They take their names, not 
from the quality of the stone, but the style in which it is 
cut. The brilliant may be an inferior stone, yet cut with 
the 64 facets, it is a brilliant, and the rose, or the table, may 
be a stone of the first water, but from its shape and size, 
being cut in the rose or table style, it must bear the name 
appropriate to the style. The cut with 04 facets is called 
brilliant, because that mode of cutting most fully reveals 
that wonderful inner light, which gives the stone its great 
value as an ornament. Hence the greater price of bril- 
liants. 

In the days of the bitterest religious animosity Amsterdam 
allowed freedom of religious worship, perhaps, however, not 
so much for any other reason, as for the prosperity of her 
trade. 

We walked through the rooms of the Palace, which, by 
the way, I believe the King rarely occupies. It is a 
large and massive pile with many spacious apartments. 
The furniture is good and tolerably rich, though somewhat 
worn. The more public corridors are carpeted with a kind 
of coarse carpet — of very plain and common kind — and all 
the rooms are warmed in the winter with iron stoves. The 
throne-room is royal — being ourselves sovereigns in New 
Amsterdam we thought it no harm to take a seat on the 
throne of Old Amsterdam. The grand hall — the dancing 



452 HOLLAND. 

hall — the assembly hall — is really magnificent, more so 
than any other I have seen — its vast proportions being con- 
sidered. It is one hundred and fifty two feet long, sixty 
wide, and one hundred feet high — lined with white Italian 
marble, and sculptured in bas-reliefs. It is hung with ban- 
ners and trophies, and has some fine statues. Through all 
the rooms were some pictures by the old Dutch masters, 
worthy of princely admiration. 

After all, that which is most worthy of admiration — the 
greatest curiosity in Holland — is Holland and the Dutch. 
A country reclaimed from the low marshes of the seashore 
by human hands — from which the infinite and mighty 
ocean is shut out only by dams and dykes which must be 
constantly watched by human eyes and tended by human 
care, or the sea will break in and whelm a nation, the most 
populous on the face of the earth, which has had its dwell- 
ing place there for long ages. 

It is a sort of basin, liable at any moment to be over- 
whelmed by a crevasse of the ocean-dykes — which may be 
caused by carelessness or by the violence of an invader. 
Much the largest part of the national expense is the care of 
these dykes, which must be constantly watched and con- 
stantly repaired. They cost about three millions of dollars 
a year. Sometimes a little lagoon begins to show itself in 
one of these broad sweeps of flats. It spreads from day to 
day wider and farther — one near Harlem extended till it 
became near forty miles in circumference, and contained about 
seventy square miles. No one could tell where or how far 
it would extend. Some ten or twelve years ago, private en- 
terprise, as a measure of defensive protection, as well as of 
profit, proposed to pump it out. They threw up an em- 
bankment, or dyke, and dug a canal of sufficient depth around 
it — they constructed a number of large wind-mills, and 
planted them along the shores of the lake, and set them to 



THE DUTCH. 453 

work enormous pumps to pump out the lake. Four years 
these wind-mills labored, till the lake was pumped dry. The 
land of the bottom of the lake was sold, last yeai - , in lots, and 
brought an immense price, and the bed of the lake is now 
devoted to agricultural purposes. Such an enterprise as this 
might well be set down as remarkable for any people but 
the Dutch. It is easy to say of this or that wonder, that it 
" beats the Dutch,'" but after all, what is there that beats the 
Dutch ? What is it to reclaim seventy square miles from the 
lake of Harlem, for the people that has reclaimed the whole 
of Holland from the sea ? There are those who speak of 
the Dutch as a heavy and sluggish people — indeed, it is told 
as a characteristic anecdote, that once a terrible gale 
wrecked so many of the Dutch fishermen, that the shores 
and beach were covered with their corpses, which were 
found to have each a pipe in his mouth — neither the tem- 
pest, nor the waves, nor the peril, nor the instant death, nor 
the final struggle, having been sufficient to disturb their slug- 
gish inactivity. Voltaire, and Beckford, and Washington 
Irving, and no one knows how many other popular writers, 
have derided the Hollanders, but what nation has better 
reason to be proud of their character and history ? Who 
but the Dutch have made the most populous country in the 
world of a vast marsh, reclaimed from the sea and fortified 
and garrisoned and successfully defended it for ages against 
the ocean % Who but they have drained their whole country 
by navigable canals, as frequent as roads, and used for the 
same purpose ? — who but they have built city and town, and 
palace, on piles, driven seventy feet down into the mud and 
sand % — who but they have utilized the wind, and made it the 
greatest of labor-saving powers for all the great purposes of 
machinery, till their country seems alive with this atmo- 
spheric machinery — what nation has suffered like them for 
conscienca and for freedom ? — what sieges, what slaughter, 



454 DORT. 

what massacres, what persecutions, they have endured — 
who but the Dutch have successfully planted their colonies 
in every portion of the known world ? — who but they have 
swept the English fleet from the channel ? In education, in 
freedom of speech and of religious worship, in commerce, 
in arms, and in an interesting and wonderful history, the 
nation is unsurpassed on the continent. 

From Amsterdam we returned to Rotterdam, and went 
thence by steamer to the old city of Dort, or Dordrecht. As 
we left Rotterdam, I counted seventy-five windmills in sight 
at once. I saw, too, a boat-load of passengers crossing the 
river in a large row-boat, rowed by women alone. It was 
at this ancient city, that the first assembly met which de- 
clared the independence of Holland of the Spanish yoke, in 
1572, and declared the Prince of Orange the only rightful 
governor of the country — and here sat the synod of Dort, 
which, after one hundred and fifty-two sessions, devoted to 
the consideration of the doctrines of Arminius, and their 
opposites — the high-toned Calvinistic doctrines of predestina- 
tion, the election of grace and justification by faith — or- 
dained the canons which are still the creed of the Dutch 
Protestants, and their ecclesiastical descendants in our 
country. 

Dort stands on an island, which is a memento of the 
perils of this country. That island was formed by an in- 
undation of the Rhine, which burst a dyke, and overwhelmed 
more than seventy villages — sweeping away every vestige of 
thirty-five of them, and destroying one hundred thousand 
lives. One almost wonders that between the river and the 
sea — the wind and the tide, which rises twelve to fifteen 
feet — such accidents are not constantly occurring." 

Through a low, sandy, and barren country, of apparently 
no good husbandry and little tillage, except of a few fertile 
spots, and through deserts of pines and stunted oaks, and the 



BREDA. 455 

alders that skirted the few canals and ditches, and through 
marshes and barrens, we trotted along our monotonous 
journey through Brabant, with a brief rest at the old forti- 
fied town of Breda on the Merk, of which the fortifications 
seem to be very strong and in good condition. The little 
city is not without its interesting historical memoirs and 
monuments. Here Charles II. resided when the death of 
Cromwell opened the way to his restoration, and here he 
was invited to return to England and re-establish the throne 
of the Stuarts. 

During the time of the Spanish dominion, Breda was 
considered impregnable. It was taken by strategem — sug- 
gested, doubtless, by the taking of ancient Troy and ancient 
Babylon. In 1590 an old captain in the army arranged 
with the master of a turf barge, to take him and seventy 
picked soldiers, in mid-winter, within the fortress by the 
channel of the sluice-way. So the captain put a false floor 
in the hold of his barge several feet from the bottom, and 
below it stowed the armed forlorn hope, and filled the 
space above them with turf peat, to sell to the garrison, and 
started for Breda, only a few miles distant. A series of un- 
lucky accidents seemed to indicate that the trick would 
fail. First a strong head wind — next a sudden cold snap 
covered the river with ice — then they got on the rocks, and 
the barge sprung aleak, and the poor imprisoned braves 
stood knee deep in the cold water, and their provisions were 
almost gone — then came the mutinous despair. The old 
veteran leader aroused them to new energy by declaring 
that if they abandoned him he would go on alone and succeed 
or perish — then, almost miraculously, the leak stopped, and 
the barge stretched rapidly forward to the gates of Breda. 
But just as they were passing the gates one of the soldiers 
was seized with a violent fit of coughing. The least noise 
would, of course, betray them, and the noble fellow smoth- 



45 & ANTWERP. 

ered his cough, and by signs besought his comrades to run 
him through with a sword — they refused and his cough 
ceased. The citadel gates were open, and the garrison 
themselves helped to drag in the welcome barge through the 
ice, and the gates were again shut. The garrison came 
rapidly for the peat, and long before night would have taken 
it all and revealed the place of concealment. The captain 
then declared that the fatigues of the last two or three days 
had exhausted him and his men, and they must all take a 
drink and a little rest and start fresh the next morning. He 
went to bed and in the dead watches of the night, arose and 
let out his little band of warriors, who quickly overpowered 
the guard, and — under cover of the night — passed for an 
army already within the fort, and the affrighted garrison 
fled precipitately, without even an effort to destroy the 
drawbridge by which they reached the town, and the Dutch 
army soon entered in triumph. The Spaniards in vain en- 
deavored to dislodge them, and it was not till thirty-five 
years after this capture by the Dutch that Spinola at last 
recaptured the fortress. He found the old barge there laid 
up, as the most fitting memorial of the great service it had 
rendered. He burnt it that he might destroy the reminder 
of such defeat — he did not want it as a trophy. 

As our diligence rolled its winding way through the 
the outer parallels of the strong fortifications of Antwerp— 
under portcullis, over drawbridge, across moats, and in the 
range of solemn and frowning batteries, I realized more than 
ever before the character and strength of a strongly fortified 
place, built up according to the best lights of military 
science. The city is walled quite round with double fortifi- 
cations. They are now building the third parallel. You 
may see the marks of the terrible bombardment of 1832 — 
the balls are still sticking in the walls. 

Antwerp has now near one hundred thousand people — less 



THE CATHEDRAL. 457 

than half what it had two hundred to three hundred years 
ago, when it was the richest and most commercial city in 
Europe. Its commerce is now small, and aptly represented 
by a few vessels lying in the Scheldt, where, then, two 
thousand five hundred were clustered together, freighted 
with the best productions of all the world. Its streets, its 
quays, its stores, its shops, speak the same language. 

Our hotel was on the Place Verte, on which also the 
old cathedral rears its slender and beautiful steeple more 
than four hundred feet high. Antwerp is strictly Roman 
Catholic, and I do not remember to have seen in Europe 
more striking and interesting evidence of sincere devoutness. 
I arose very early in the morning, before the people were 
much astir, to look round in the morning silence — hardly 
any but the servants were visible, and in the doors and pas- 
sages around the square were the servant girls — their brooms, 
and dusters, and wash-cloths by their sides — on their knees, 
with their faces toward the cathedral, apparently in deepest 
devotion, unconscious of all the world besides, whispering 
their early morning prayers to Heaven. 

The carving and the tracery of the Cathedral steeple was 
well described by Napoleon as seeming to be made of Mechlin 
lace. The church itself was originally wholly exposed to 
view, being bounded on all sides by streets. Then, the unity 
of effect must have greatly added to the beauty of the parts. 
Now, between the towers and buttresses on the streets, shops 
and houses are built against the cathedral walls, thus covering 
up the base of the church with the most vulgar, cheap, and 
tasteless buildings, devoted to the profanities of trade. The 
only answer I could get to my inquiries why such a sacrilegious 
abomination had been permitted or was tolerated, was that 
when the Spaniards were in possession of the city, these 
buildings were erected to protect the body of the church from 
being destroyed by the accidents of war, or desecrated by the 

20 



458 RUBENS. 

Protestant soldiery should they, by the fortune of war, get 
possession of the city — hardly a sufficient reason for 
allowing such a temple to continue to be surrounded — 
under the droppings of the sanctuary — by the tables of 
the money-changers, and the shops of vanity fair and the 
pride of life. The inside is spacious, majestic, and plain 
— what there is of ornament is modern. The width is two 
hundred and thirty feet, and the length five hundred feet. 
There is a broad central aisle, and six side aisles — three on 
each side. 

The principal attraction of this and the many other fine 
churches, is the great pictures of Rubens. His master- 
pieces, the Descent from the Cross, the Elevation of the 
Cross, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Resurrection of 
the Savior — are in this church. In one of the chapels is a 
picture, by Frank, of Christ disputing with the Doctors — 
among the learned doctors Avhom the infant Savior con- 
founds with his questions and godlike logic, are recognized 
Luther, and Calvin, and other reformers. The Descent 
from the Cross embodies a conceit of another kind on the 
part of the great artist. It is said to have been painted for 
a company or guild, whose patron saint was Saint Christo- 
pher, or, as Rubens interpreted his name,Christo-fer — Christ- 
bearer — so in the several pictures of which it is composed, the 
bearing or carrying of Christ is the leading idea. In the 
salutation of the Virgin, she bears the unborn Savior — in the 
presentation in the temple, he is borne as a babe — in another, 
St. Christopher bears the infant Savior on his shoulders — in 
another, Simeon bears the holy babe in his raised arms,and his 
grateful eyes are directed to heaven — and finally in the de- 
scent from the Cross, the body is borne by Joseph of Arima- 
thea, St. John, Mary Magdalene, and others. There are 
sepulchral monuments also in the Cathedral, but not so 
many nor so fine as those in the Church of St. James, 



MOUNT CALVARY AND PURGATORY. 459 

which is exceedingly beautiful in its interior — its marbles, 
and statues, and groups — its railings — its balustrades — its 
waving columns — its three high altars — its carvings — all are 
most exquisite in their finish, pose and general artistic effect, 
as well as their specific and individual effect. In the Church 
of St. Paul is that dreadful picture by the same master, the 
Flagellation of Christ. The truth of the scene is indescrib- 
ably shocking — the bruised and lacerated flesh — the swollen 
and torturing stripes, and the trickling blood, make one really 
shrink away from the painting, as one would from the 
reality. 

The greatest attraction, however, for the faithful of Ant- 
werp,^ this church — above all the Rubens and the Van Dykes 
— is outside the church, at the right of the entrance — it is a 
representation of Mount Calvary and purgatory. In rude 
rockwork, not badly arranged, is reared a miniature Calvary, 
covered here and there with the statues of patriarchs, and 
saints, and angels, such as may well have thronged Calvary 
on the day of redemption — beneath the mountain is the 
Savior, when he descended into hell, and there he lies tran- 
quilly in state, richly shrouded in silk, while around him is 
purgatory, full of the souls of the semi-damned, ghastly and 
writhing in imploring agony, in the midst of the flames, that 
send their burning glare on the walls of the dreadful pit. 
All these rocks, and mountain, and cavern, and statues, and 
flames, are rude and cheap in their construction, but impres- 
sive to all, and deeply so to those who see in them but a 
truthful lesson of the most, solemn truths of their religion. 

The beautiful Merchants' Exchange, with its fine old 
arched arcades, extending all round — antique and tasteful, 
shady and cool — and the open space, or grand room, with its 
crystal-palace roof, light as day, and spacious and free- 
seemed in all its appointments worthy of the best days of 
commercial Antwerp. Over the arcades are the ample 



430 RUBENS. 

rooms of the tribunal of commerce. It is worthy of special 
wonder that in New-York the merchants have never estab- 
lished a tribunal of commerce of liberal jurisdiction, and 
with simple and intelligible arrangements for the prompt, 
speedy, and just decision of the numerous questions of real 
and honest dispute in the current affairs of commerce, where 
the law's delays, and the technicalities of legal practice are 
a denial of justice. 

The quays and stone docks built by Napoleon I., are 
noble specimens of solid reform, as are the streets, which are 
now built on arches over the canals. Posterity will accord 
that great man the merit of being a great reformer. One of 
the greatest destructionists that ever lived, we must agree that 
he destroyed to substitute a better order of things — he 
drove the ploughshare through the hardened crust of old 
abuses, and in the soil which his destruction had mellowed, 
he planted many a seed which will bring forth in due time 
a hundred fold. 

Few would visit Antwerp were it not for the opportunity 
of studying the great Flemish school of painting, of which 
Rubens is the greatest master. At the time of the birth of 
Rubens, at Cologne, his father was the mayor of Antwerp. 
The city has never ceased to worship him and his works. 
His bronze statue in his robes as ambassador to England is 
in the Place Verte— the Cathedral Place— His chair, his easel, 
his palette, his old clothes, are preserved as the choicest 
relics and memorials — and his great masterpieces justly fill 
the highest places of honor in palaces, and temples, and gal- 
leries. 

The churches and the museum of Antwerp alone, without 
resorting to those of the other cities, furnish enough of his 
works to convince the connoisseur, and the artist, and the 
student, of the great genius of Rubens and of the natural 
sympathy of the Teutonic and Saxon mind with his great 



THE MUSEUM. 461 

qualities. He is to the great Italian masters as Homer to 
Virgil, as Shakespeare to Milton, as Scott to Richardson — 
Truth and nature — truth to the qualities of the highest possi- 
ble excellence in nature — are his real aim and his great suc- 
cess. Doubtless much of his characteristic excellence comes 
from his wonderful familiarity with the mechanical skill, 
belonging properly to his art. 

The ease and facility which are so striking in Rubens, 
and so apparent in his pictures, came from that early 
discipline in the art of painting, which enabled Sir Joshua 
Reynolds to say — ' ' Rubens was, perhaps, the greatest mas- 
ter in the mechanical part of the art, the best workman with 
his tools that ever exercised a pencil." This, to the artist, is 
what a thorough and familiar knowledge of language, a 
ready, copious, and various command of words, is to the 
writer — giving a facility of expression — a dexterity — which 
brings to the thought, as soon as conceived, its appropriate 
clothing without effort, or search, or delay. This, obviously, 
gives a freshness and vigor and an idiosyncracy of expression 
which transfers to the canvass of the artist, or to the page of 
the writer, a daguerreotype of his mind, lifelike and striking. 
It is this which makes attractive so many productions which 
are, nevertheless, subject to severe criticism, on the applica- 
tion of the formal rules of conventional law. 

The museum is strong, also, in the other celebrities of 
Flemish and German art — Teniers, Durer, Holbein, the Van 
Eycks, Mending, Mabuse, De Vos, Franck, Schut, Seg- 
hers, Heneyns, De Backer, Van Dyck, Matsys, Floris, Jor- 
daens, Snyders, Wouvermans, &c, &c. There are, also, 
some fine works by the Italian masters. I confess to a 
greater admiration for Flemish, Dutch, and German art 
than for Italian — not meaning to say, however, that I 
consider the northern masters greater men — men of 
greater genius, or higher cultivation, or more careful 



462 



QUENTVN MATSYS. 



students, but more in harmony with my own tastes and 
instincts. 

In the Cathedral Square is a wrought-iron well-cover, of ex- 
ceedingly beautiful proportions,and graceful pattern and finish 
in its light and airy openwork. It is surmounted by an iron 
statue of a knight in armor with a glove in his hand — the 
whole of the fabric including the statue and the beautiful vines 
that twine their tendrils about it, made by Quentyn Matsys, a 
blacksmith. This iron well-curb, shows Matsys to have been, 
even then, while leaning over his anvil, an artist, as well as 
a mechanic, of taste and cultivation. According to the 
tradition of three hundred years, the young blacksmith fell 
in love with the pretty daughter of De Vriendt, more 
usually called Floris — a painter of reputation in those days, 
and since called sometimes the Flemish Raphael — He was 
so called, because he was the best Flemish painter of his 
time — certainly not because he approached in merit the 
great Italian, for I do not perceive that they had one quality 
in common. Well, Floris forbid the blacksmith his house, 
declaring that his daughter should not stoop to Tnarry a 
blacksmith, but that he intended her for a painter's wife 
— whereupon Matsys secretly devoted himself to the study 
of painting, and in due time manifested the same genius 
in that art as in his original trade. When sure of his skill, 
he stole into the studio of Floris, who had in hand his 
Descent of the Fallen Angels. The blacksmith then painted 
a bee conspicuously on the thigh of one of the angels and 
left it there. When Floris resumed his work he could not 
fail to notice it, supposed it was a real bee, and on discovering 
his error, was so delighted with the masterly execution of 
the little insect, that he demanded of his daughter the name 
of the artist who had thus honored his studio, and learning 
that it was the repulsed blacksmith, whom she had permitted 
thus to plead his cause, he gave him his daughter, and 



BRUSSELS. 463 

Matsys soon became a painter of whom not only De Vriendt 
but all Flanders was justly proud. The picture of the Fall- 
en Angel with the bee on his thigh, has a conspicuous place 
in the collection of the museum, and is always referred to, 
to vouch for the pretty love story. Murray calls the tradi- 
tion of the bee being painted by Matsys, "a foolish story," 
and says it was painted by Floris himself for the admiration 
of the vulgar — which seems to me a much more foolish 
story. It is not easy to see why an artist worthy of the 
title of the Flemish Raphael, should thus inappropriately 
court the admiration of the vulgar, in a picture certainly 
of great merit, and of much greater pretension than merit — 
Better let the old tradition stand I think. 

From Antwerp — through a low and uninteresting country 
via Malines — Mechlin — we went to Brussels. 

Brussels, the beautiful capital of the modern kingdom of 
Belgium, well deserves the reputation of being one of the 
finest capitals in Europe. It has many wide and beautiful 
streets, and is surrounded by boulevards, after the manner of 
Paris. The streets are finely paved and clean. The houses 
are usually lofty, and of an agreeable style of architecture, 
and painted in light colors, which gives to the city an air of 
lightness and freshness, which to me was quite as agreeable as 
any city I have seen in Europe, and I do not wonder that it has 
been so favorite a residence for English families residing 
abroad. Its facilities for education are of a high character, 
while the expense of residing here is quite moderate com- 
pared with other capitals of the same grade and equal 
advantages. I found English as well as French spoken 
everywhere. A Protestant government with a Catholic 
people, produces a tone of liberality similar to that of 
Dresden, where the government is Catholic and the people 
are Protestant, and doubtless this necessary liberality con- 
tributes to make both these capitals favorite resting-places 
for foreigners. 



464 STATUES AND MONUMENTS. 

Like Antwerp, the city abounds in tine old mansions, with 
the lofty and ornamental fronts, rich gables, pediments, and 
windows, that we find in all the cities of Europe, which, three 
to four hundred years ago, united the luxury and splendor of 
a court, or of high nobility, with the more ostentatious and 
pretentious display of the wealth of great commercial prosper- 
ity. In many of these towns — long stationary or retrograde 
— these aristocratic edifices are contrasted with only the hum- 
bler ones of coeval plebeians, now crumbling in decay, while 
in Brussels they contrast even more strongly with the light, 
airy, and regular constructions of modern taste. The city is 
full of historical associations and heroic memories. Here 
was the grand ball which was disturbed by the cannon 
of Waterloo, celebrated by Byron in the well-known 
passage — 

"There was a sound of revelry by night." 

Here Charles V. abdicated the throne — here the Protestants, 
who had determined to drive out the Spaniards and Philip 
II., voluntarily adopted as their name the Gueux — the beg- 
gars — which had been applied to them in contempt. Some 
of them, the same evening in which they had been con- 
temptuously called beggars, appeared in the balcony of their 
hotel with a beggar's wallet over their shoulders, and a small 
cup in their hands, from which, with an air of satisfaction, 
they drank to the success of the Gueux, and the name was 
their watchword and war-cry, as they went on from strength 
to strength, till they triumphed and drove the bloody bigots 
out of their country. 

There are fine statues, and monuments, and cenotaphs, in 
the public places, in the venerable churches, and in the mag- 
nificent public buildings. Among them is a fine statue in 
bronze of Godfrey de Bouillon, the brave old crusader — 
there is one to William, Prince of Orange — the monument 



STATUE OF THE MANIKIN- 465 

to the martyrs of the revolutiou of 1830 is here. The 
bloody battles of that civil war were fought in the heart of 
Brussels, and one of the public squares is called the Place 
of the Martyrs. It contains the buried dead who fell on 
that spot, in the last desperate strife of September, 1830, 
which established the revolution, and the separate political 
and national existence of Belgium. 

Honi soit qui mal y pense — As we strayed along the streets, 
hardly knowing whither we went — at the corner of Oak and 
Stove-streets — Rue du Chene, and Hue de l'Etuve — we lit 
upon the celebrated statue of the oldest inhabitant and the 
most faithful citizen of Brussels — the Manikin. When he 
was born who knows ? His age is a greater secret than 
that of the most discreet spinster. For aught I know he has 
lived forever. Recorded history says that under the dukes 
'of Burgundy he was a Burgundian — under Maxmilian he 
was a German — under Charles V. he was a Spaniard, and he 
was a gueux in the time of Philip — in the days of Maria 
Theresa he wore the uniform of the black eagle. He was a 
republican under the Directory — an imperialist under 
Napoleon — a Dutchman under King William, and he is a 
Belgian under Leopold — always true to nature, he enjoys 
the admiration and affection of his fellow citizens. 

There stands the graceful little bronze, about twenty 
inches high, at the corner of the streets. If it would not 
injure the reputation of Misses the Graces, you might say 
he was born of one of them. If he had wings, and a bow 
and arrow, you would be sure he was Cupid. Elevated on 
a pedestal — enshrined in a beautiful niche — shut in and pro- 
tected by an iron grating, and being the outlet of a fountain, 
he makes water into a vase, day in and day out, and has 
done so century after century, whatever king has reigned. 
He is said to have been once summoned to court, by a 
policeman, whose zeal was beyond his knowledge, for a vio- 

20* 



466 MANIKIN — HIS "WARDKOBE. 

lation of the ordinance against using the streets instead of 
the public urinals. They sell in shops a print of that 
" Arrest of the oldest inhabitant of Brussels." Those who 
are familiar with the galleries of high art, well know that 
nudity — absolute nudity — is one of the principal charms of 
high art, and little Manikin is therefore in puris naturali- 
bus — not even a fig-leaf — stark-naked — while apparently 
yielding to one of the most imperious demands of nature. 
Pie is not, however, naked on great public occasions. Then 
high art must yield to high display, and he wears sometimes 
one dress and sometimes another — always covering up his 
art, but always leaving uncovered his most striking touch of 
nature. His vase is always running over, from a constant 
supply, no matter how he may be dressed. His ward- 
robe consists of ten suits — the uniform of the present Bel- 
gian dynasty — the blue blouse uniform of the civic guard 
of the Belgian revolution of 1830, and eight suits of full- 
dress uniform, for processions and grand displays, when he 
wears his orders, crosses, stars, and cockades of nobility — 
and the Court, the people, and the army, do him honor- 
The Belgians almost worship him as the palladium of their 
prosperity. He has been several times stolen by private 
thieves, and once or twice carried into a sort of public 
captivity. In 1747, the English army took him, and the 
people of Grammont stole him from them. The French 
army, under Louis XV., took him — and once, during this 
century, he was stolen, for which the thief was convicted 
and sentenced to hard labor, as a destroyer of public monu- 
ments. On all these occasions of public loss, the whole 
community is astir and buzzing like a bee-hive, when the 
queen bee is missing — and when the little image is again 
restored to his station, universal shouts and congratulations 
testify the general joy. There is a public house inscribed 
to his honor, "To the Manikin recovered, to the general 



HIS HONORS AND INCOME. 467 

satisfaction of his fellow citizens." They recovered him 
from the French while the army was still in the city, and 
after he was put in his place, a French grenadier insulted 
him, when, to atone for this insult, and to ingratiate him- 
self Avith the people, Louis XV. conferred upon him the 
right of personal nobility, gave him the dress of a knight, 
with the right to wear a sword, and decorated him with 
the cross of Saint Louis. This compelled the troops not 
only to respect him, but to give him the military salute. 
The Emperor, Maximilian, decorated him with his orders — 
In 1789, when the Austrians were driven out, the cockade 
of Brabant was added to his decorations. Napoleon gave 
him the key of a chamberlain. A few years ago, a lady of 
Brussels left him, by will, a thousand florins, which only 
increased the income that had before been given him by 
princes and men of wealth. His valet — a public appoint- 
ment — has a salary of two hundred florins, for which he 
cares for his wardrobe and makes his toilette. The funds 
of the Manikin are well invested, and administered by a 
distinguished lawyer of Brussels. 

While there is nothing positively known of the early his- 
tory of the Manikin — those early days, which are hazy 
and dim, and finally vanish in the thick mists of fabulous 
antiquity — still there are traditions, which, to some extent, 
account for the religious and romantic attachment of Bel- 
gium's capital, her beauty and her chivalry. There are 
religious traditions — patriotic traditions — classical traditions, 
and parental and monumental traditions, the variety of 
which may well justify us in looking with some little doubt 
upon all of them. It is said that in the thirteenth century — 
the city was doubtless at that early period very combustible — 
the public enemies had thrown a lighted match or torch, 
or bougie, to fire the city, and a little fellow, three or four 
years old, seeing it, ran — wasn't he bright? — and put it 



468 TRADITIONS OF THE MANIKIN. 

out, and saved the city, for which, patriotic gratitude reared 
to him this statue as a monumental representation of the 
boy and the deed. The classicals insist that it is but a 
statue of Cupid, because there is in the Greek anthology an 
epigram on Cupid lost, and there is an ancient sculpture 
which represents the little blind hunter in very much the 
same situation and function as the present statue — Besides, 
it is well known that Cupid and the Graces were almost 
inseparable — now in ages back, there was another fountain, 
at no very great distance — in the street called, from it, the 
Troispucelles — composed of a group of statues of three 
young girls — which might well represent the Graces, if the 
Manikin was Cupid — although the usual classical position of 
the Graces has not been a sitting posture. Notwithstanding 
my respect for classical antiquity, I must consider the classi- 
cal solution inadmissible. The faithful may be more satis- 
fied with the tradition which makes it an expiatory monu- 
ment. On the return of an army of erusadei'S from Pales- 
tine, there was a grand procession, it is said, of the clergy, 
with the Holy Sacrament, and the banners, followed by the 
returned crusaders. A little prince of Brussels, five years 
old, led by his governor, marched at the head of the pro- 
cession, bearing a taper. The little fellow's princely blood 
was, however, human, and a long walk affected his loins — 
he was too young to feel the duty of mortifying the flesh, and 
did not feel enough sensible of the sacredness of the occa- 
sion, perhaps — and so — indeed he could not help it — he 
stopped at the corner of Oak street for relief and — as a 
chastisement for the irreverent act — his royal highness was 
not through, when the procession, which lasted an hour, had 
passed — and this monument was erected to commemorate 
that miraculous expiation of his fault. Strong as the proba- 
bilities may be in favor of this, I do not consider it to rest 
upon a stronger probability than that other tradition which 



TRADITION OF THE MANIKIN. 469 

says that an old Jew, finding a beautiful little Christian boy, 
son of one of the high nobility, performing the same natu- 
ral function, at the corner of Stove street, during one of the 
city processions, stole him, and took him to his house to 
crucify him. The father of the child, however, not knowing 
what had become of him, addressed himself with so much zeal 
and devotion" to the Holy Virgin, whose church of Bon 
Secours was hard by, that the old Jew became alarmed, 
and at evening took the little lord back to the corner of the 
street whence he had taken him, and there his parents 
found him, and in gratitude to Notre Dame de Bon Se- 
cours, made a gift to her church, and reared this monument 
on the spot where the son was lost and found. What gives 
color to the story is, that the street where the old Jew lived, 
was immediately called the street of the Little Christian, 
which it retains to this day ! There is still another tradi- 
tion, which finds equally ready credence, stating that a 
sorceress once lived at this corner, and that a little child — it 
does not appear whether playfully or maliciously — wet her 
door, and she fixed him in the act and place perpetually — 
but a holy man of the neighborhood, cheated the old hag by 
slily putting this statue there, in place of the little boy. 

I have given, perhaps, more space to the Manikin than 
it might be deemed to deserve, but it is really one of the 
old institutions of this old and beautiful city, and to an 
American, even after he has gone the grand rounds, exhibits 
a novelty in European characteristics. 



PARIS. 

FROM Belgium we entered France at Valenciennes, 
where we were compelled to give up all our news- 
papers, purchased on leaving Brussels. What a cowardly 
and distrustful policy it seems to an American, for a great 
and powerful nation like France, so cultivated, so intelli- 
gent, and acute, and so Avarlike and triumphant, to be 
afraid of a newspaper in the pocket of a traveller entering 
her dominions, or of the traveller himself. It is quite clear 
.that nothing is gained by the system of passports and police 
examinations at the frontier. There is nothing of it in 
America — nothing in the British islands — next to nothing 
in Switzerland, and the condition of all those countries dis- 
proves the necessity of the system. 

Quietly back in my old quarters in Paris, after all my 
wanderings, I have come back into my early track and it 
seems as though I had got home — Strange as it looked here 
when I first opened my eyes upon this great Babylon, now 
it has really a home look. Royal equipage and donkey cart — 



RETURN TO PARIS. 471 

the Boulevards — and the old streets of la cite, grotesque and 
ancient, quaint, crooked, narrow, and lofty — the Gardens of 
the Tuileries — the Champs Elysees — the Madeleine and the 
Flower Market — the Rue de la Paix — the Place Vendome — 
the Rue Rivoli — the Place de la Concorde — how I greet you 
all with the friendly welcome of old acquaintance ! After 
wandering monthly and daily from one strange place to 
another — from novelty to novelty — from antiquity to antiq- 
uity — never relieved by a return — never coming back and 
starting out again — how it refreshes one to get into an old 
place, and, on the same spot, to call back, as familiar memo- 
ries, as souvenirs de voyage, the fresh surprises of the first 
look. If you have never tried it, it is well worth the experi- 
ment of crossing your track at interesting localities, to get 
the delight of so interesting an experience. Ye grand old 
domes and towers — my landmarks — the towering Invalides 
— the double towers of graceful St. Sulpice, and of venerable 
Notre Dame, will ye not rise in my memory, longer and 
fresher, for these smiles of recognition with which I meet 
you 1 

II faut s'anuiser, seems at first sight to be the beginning, 
middle and end of life here, so far as the more open and visi- 
ble life, in the fashionable Paris, is concerned. It is said that 
the Seine divides Paris into two great classes — the fair 
dealers and the jockeys — On the one side you cannot fail to 
see that the shopkeeper is not a cheat, but is worthy of con- 
fidence — on the other side you always feel that, unless you 
are wide awake, you will be taken in and done for. So a sec- 
ond and more serious look at the great French capital com- 
pels us to admit the truth of what an American, long resident 
here, said to me — that there is a real life here — that here, as 
well as in the provinces — in the city as well as in the country 
— in the Boulevards as well as in the homelier streets — the 
great drudgery of life is constantly and usefully going its 



472 PARISIAN LIFE. 

rounds — toil plods on — labor earns his daily wages — poverty 
begs a brother of the earth to give him leave to toil, and 
thrifty industry accumulates his gains. There is a sobriety 
and reality in the real currents of Parisian life which do not 
suffer in comparison with London or New- York. So, too, 
of other often repeated characteristics of Paris — its immoral- 
ity and licentiousness — it is a surface view and inconsider- 
ate speech, that classifies all Parisians, and sometimes all 
French, as voluptuous and sensual, dissolute and infidel. 
The character of some monarchs, and many courtiers — 
of the idle class — comparatively not a large one — has been 
attributed to the more moral many. 

In every large city — especially in every gay capital, large 
or small, vice and irreligion, gallantry and social immorality, 
take the most agreeable manners, and press themselves for- 
ward into the best circles and the most conspicuous places. 
With the same sort of romancers, and feuilletonists, and 
ephemeral scribblers, and letter-writers, London and New- 
York, and Boston, and Philadelphia, would easily furnish 
materials for a character as loose as that of Paris. While these 
latter cities boast of a greatly preponderating staid, religious, 
moral, and worthy population, which saves them from the 
reputation of dissolute cities, so the vast majority of the 
inhabitants of Paris and of France arc not justly chargeable 
with the character which the vices of the few, have, in most 
minds, thrown upon them. Neither, on the other hand, must 
we forget that much of the vice and sensual immorality 
of Paris, is not exposed to public view. Being subject to the 
license, regulation, and supervision of the government, it is 
shut in and confined to its own place. In Paris, and, indeed, 
in all the cities I have visited on the Continent, no flaunt- 
ing courtesans and brazen-faced prostitutes, or mock- 
modest women of easy virtue, as in London and New-York, 
throng the streets to solicit or tempt the street- walking men. 
That class must be sought. 



FRENCH GOVERNMENT. 473 

This should always be borne in mind as we look upon 
Parisian life and habits, and move about in the thorough- 
fares and saloons, the shows and amusements — high and 
low — of Paris, and in the quiet residences of the sober citi- 
zens, who mind their own business, and I fancy that Paris 
was never more in its normal condition than under Napoleon 
III. — Never was more perfect than now, as I understand, 
that complete and jarless routine which the Parisians, of all 
classes, love so much — No fear of bloody fusillades, or of 
popular outbreaks, when there are plenty of work for the 
trades, plenty of customers for the shops, and plenty of 
amusements at the theatres and gardens — Then any one may 
govern them that pleases. The French — a few tetes exaltees 
excepted — have no desire to govern themselves. The revo- 
lutions that have come and gone in our day, like the scenic 
changes of the theatre, have not shown, on the part of the 
French, a determination to govern themselves, but simply a 
desire to throw off what bore heavily upon them — they have 
always thrown it off, and they have always taken it back, 
or taken up, with content and satisfaction, whatever has been 
offered instead, provided that it only promised relief. The 
maddened People — the Republic — the Directory — the Con- 
sulate — the Empire — the Bourbon — the Orleans — the New 
Republic — the New Empire, have each, in its success, with 
its promises, called forth the shouts of welcome — and 
as one after another has become burdensome, its failure has 
brought the curses of the same people. 

No government has ever been more popular than the pres- 
ent. I often employed the same coachman — I talked much 
and freely with him. I said the Emperor was not 
popular at first, but now he seems to be very popular. 
" Oh, yes," said he, " he is just the man — we needed but 
him. He knows how to hold the reins of government as 
well as I do to manage my horses. We don't want a repub- 



474 THE EMPEHOK. 

lie — we have not been brought up to it, and don't know how 
to make it go — Ave have tried it and always failed." As 
we drove past the Invalides, on the chapel front, where 
some new gateposts had just been surmounted with gilded 
eagles, which he had not before seen, he exclaimed, with de- 
light — " Voila nos aigles revenues.'" He pointed to the 
Macadamized streets about that great hospital — and said, "The 
managers applied to the Emperor to Macadamize the streets, 
to prevent the noise, and he did it. He does all that is asked 
of him." By the way, others say that the Emperor is so 
ready to Macadamize, because paving stones are so conve- 
nient in revolutionary barricades. This man, say fifty-five 
years old, was one of the many thousand licensed drivers, 
and he assured me that all hold the same opinion of the 
present government. This Avas, doubtless, in some degree 
to be attributed to the fact that these many thousands enjoy 
a complete monopoly — not another license Avould be granted 
on any consideration, and any enterprising man Avho desired 
to go into the business — for the supply Avas greatly inade- 
quate to the demand — was compelled to buy out one of the 
numbers already existing. My man said his number could 
be quickly sold for ten thousand francs. This, among 
many others, seemed to me a characteristic measure of tact 
and policy on the part of Louis Napoleon — by securing a 
prosperous and steady business, to make fast friends, of 
these ten thousand talking and busy men, who pass 
through the streets of Paris night and day, serA-ing the 
better classes and the strangers, and constantly associating, 
as equals, with the common and middle classes. 

Napoleon First did much for Paris — Napoleon Third, if 
his life be spared, will do more. They jeer at his improve- 
ments in the Bois de Boulogne — but he can Avait — it will 
not be long — to see all Paris as proud as he will be, of the 
great success of that princely enterprise. Indeed, one of 



FRANCE. 475 

his striking characteristics — one that marks him as a man 
of real greatness — is a silent trust in his own convictions — 
the easy confidence with which he can wait, till his thought 
becomes action — till his plans are accomplished — till the 
fullness of time shall come — till others, as well as himself, 
see the connection of the beginning with the end. When 
he was a fugitive and a vagabond, he never doubted his 
destiny — he was biding his time — at Strasburg and Boulogne 
his mistake was that he had not waited long enough, and in 
the prison of Ham he was only waiting with the same confi- 
dence in his glorious future. He is considered mysterious. 
It is because he is waiting. 

What a nation is the French — what a country is France — 
what a histoiy, from Charles Martel to Napoleon III. — what 
science — what letters — Avhat art — what war — what diplo- 
macy — what statesmanship ! Is there a man that has risen 
to immortality anywhere else in Europe, no matter in what 
line of distinction, that France does not furnish another 
that stands at least on the same level with him, and is his 
rival in his characteristic excellence ? What fields of real 
glory make up the story of her triumphs ! Scenic and 
showy — tasteful and apropos — melodramatic and startling — 
mercurial and lively, in personal chai*acter and social in- 
stincts — the same characteristics on the grander scale of 
national life, and in the longer vistas of history, stand out 
in almost sublime manifestations. 

Paris is France, is a proverbial truth. In nothing is it 
more fully illustrated than in these characteristics of indi- 
vidual, social, and national life. The capital is at the same 
time the cause and the effect of that truth. As nowhere 
but in a great capital could be fitly shown at once all such 
great national characteristics, so in Paris are they all shown, 
and there do they make it what it is. They make Paris — 
and Paris declares their glory to all the nations. Paris is 
one of the national glories — a principal glory — in having 



476 FERE LA CHAISE. 

there reproduced, in detail, all the glories of her ages. Is 
there a man of Avhom France has been proud, you will 
find him now in Parisian monuments and memorials of the 
most enduring and worthy character. So of the glories of 
her history, literary, scientific and heroic. Always a power 
of the first-class, always has she maintained that position, by 
the lavish expenditure of her treasures, to sustain the glory 
of her arms, and her arts, and her learning. The three 
great cemeteries — Pere la Chaise, Montmartre, and Mont 
Parnasse — in different portions of the city, tell the story of 
French commemorations in one way. Pere la Chaise — the 
largest and most interesting — contains sixteen thousand 
monuments, in almost all possible forms of marble, and 
granite, and bronze, which taste or the vanity of sorrow 
could suggest — costing, it is said, twenty-five million dollars — 
scattered over one hundred and fifty acres, with every variety 
of charming seene and labyrinthian walk. In one moment 
you feel the solemnity and silence of the place, in a se- 
cluded dell, whence is shut out all but the quiet of the grave 
and from it you mount, in the next moment, to an eminence 
which presents the finest view of the whole city, with its 
temples and towers — so grand and interesting, that in the 
view }'Ou would forget all the proprieties of the place, and 
be lost in the grander scene, were you not compelled to feel 
even more solemn in the midst of these sepulchral acres, 
as you look out from them, upon that gay and crowded, and 
heedless capital — seeming to see vast generations, in every 
succeeding whirl of their great dance of death, coming 
nearer and nearer to the place appointed for all living. 

Looking out from Pere la Chaise at the east, with Mont- 
martre on the north, Mont Parnasse on the south, and the 
whole city before you, it is easy to consider the great city as 
but the place of more central and lofty monuments, around 
which the cemeteries are but specks of suburban green. 



MONUMENTS. 477 

Paris is all monuments. What noble piles have been 
erected during the past ages, for palaces of kings and 
princes, and for the many public institutions of benevo- 
lence and utility. The triumphal arches and the lofty 
columns, are but monuments to the multitudinous dead 
of the battle fields — and the Invalides, the Pantheon, 
the Madeleine, and Notre Dame, are but the monumental 
labors of dead kings. The column of the Place du Chatelet — 
the column of the Place Vendome, and the column of July, 
are the records of triumphs when the old monarchy was 
hurried to the grave and the legitimate race was buried in 
exile. It is said that by the end of this century most of 
the present marbles of Pere la Chaise will have fallen to 
indistinguishable ruin, yet the first body was interred there 
just fifty years ago — a short commemoration. Not so with 
the monuments of Paris. They are built with more solidity 
and watched and cared for with more solicitude. 

Every traveller has visited Pere la Chaise — there is noth- 
ing new to write about it. It has, of course, many things 
in common with the cemeteries of large cities, which have 
been so long occupied for their solemn purpose. They are 
all too crowded. The monuments seem in some cases hud- 
dled togethei\ We only rambled in it for a short time, and 
as our attention was arrested with this name or that, we 
gazed for a moment upon it, plucked a flower or a leaf, if 
one was to be found, to serve as memorials of the immortal 
dead, who in death, as in life, found the common lot of 
humanity. Every one loves to stop about the dwellings of 
the dead — especially to look for a moment upon the graves 
of the great or the famous. Our human sympathy demon- 
strates our brotherhood with all the silent sleepers — our 
human pride silently claims kindred with those who are 
deservedly honored in life and in death — and our personal 
vanity asserts our superiority to many of those who, without 



478 THE GLORY OF FRANCE. 

any just claims to pre-eminence, are forced into a distinc- 
tion which does not belong to them. We gathered flowers 
from the graves of Moliere, Lafontaine and Moratin — About 
the grave of La Place, the undevout astronomer — he was 
an atheist, and fitly enough not a green thing grew upon 
his grave any more than hopes on the death-bed of an 
atheist — a few poppies threw off their sleepy odors near by 
the foundation of his monument, and we plucked them as 
a fitting memento of one whose genius and learning made 
him immortal, notwithstanding his atheism had consigned 
him to annihilation. Coming suddenly upon the monument 
of Abelard and Heloise— the learned, the frail, the penitent — 
it was a beautiful surprise to us. A Gothic Baldaquin 
covers the tomb, upon which are images of the two lovers 
side by side. It is quite the most beautiful sepulchral 
monument I have seen — deeply religious in its tone and ac- 
cessories. The whole is surrounded by a fence or railing, 
within which, but out of ordinary reach, were some beauti- 
ful flowers, in fresh bloom. There are many votive offer- 
ings scattered upon Ihe tomb. One, inscribed " To my 
sister," was suggestive. 

The glory of France is never an idle word on the lips 
of a Frenchman. Her national strength, and union, and 
unity, is her glory. In her arts, her arms, her letters and 
her science, her history is radiant. Through ages of ages 
her great men shine out — differing in glory only as one star 
differeth from another star in glory — and all along, while 
they have labored for their own love of their particular 
pursuit, and for a high-toned but selfish ambition, the master 
passion of their souls has seemed to be the glory of France } 
and France accepts all the glory, no matter how revolution- 
ary and irregular may have been the particular agencies 
which have added to her triumphs. Had Cromwell done in 
France what he did in England, canvas and stone, and 



PALACE OF VERSAILLES. 479 

bronze, would glorify and perpetuate his great deeds, as 
she does those of Napoleon and the first Republic. Such a 
nation must bo always irresistible. Such a nation must 
everywhere preserve and exalt the memorials of her great- 
ness, as she has done — as you see it in the Palace of the 
Louvre, in story above story, in hall after hall, in gallery 
after gallery, in cabinet after cabinet — as you see it in the 
Palace of Versailles,, a few miles from Paris — itself a most 
wonderful monument, in the mere pile of buildings, and the 
grand garden of surroundings, but more so in its more than a 
thousand historical paintings of grand achievements, and its 
more than a thousand portraits of historical men, and its 
long galleries of historical sculptures. The hall of the 
Kings — the hall of the Royal residences — the hall of the 
Admirals — the hall of the Constables — the hall of the 
Marshals — the hall of the great Warriors — the galleries 
upon galleries of statues and busts — the galleries of battles — 
the galleries of the crusades. In these paintings — covering 
all French history from the time of Pharamond to that of 
the latest canvas hardly yet dry — they seem to follow 
the footsteps of the hero — did he distinguish himself while 
an ensign, in the heroic defence of his flag ? — there is the 
picture — As a captain, did he lead his company into the 
imminent deadly breach ? — there is another picture — and so, 
as he rises, from glory to glory, from the ranks, all along 
up to the baton of a marshal, there are all the pictures, in 
their appropriate chronological place. You can form some 
idea of the vastness of this collection when I say that, if 
you should give but five minutes to each room, it would 
take you three days, of five hours each — it is open only 
from eleven to four o'clock — to pass through the rooms — if 
you give but a glance of one minute to each work of art, it 
would take seven days, of five hours a day, to go through 
them — and still there are rooms where you would like to 



480 



LITTLE TKIANON. 



devote a day, and then come again — such is the hall of 
Constantine, with its pictures of vast size of the siege of 
Constantine, in 1837, and other grand battles of our own 
times — eight pictures by Horace Vernet, and others by other 
artists of renown — and the grand gallery of battles is three 
hundred and ninety-three feet long, forty-two feet wide, and 
forty-two feet high, and full of pictures of the grandest 
subjects, by the greatest of French artists. 

This great collection is open free to the public on Sunday, 
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday and 
Friday, strangers with passports, alone are admitted. What 
an historical and French education this gives to the people! 
How it publishes and repeats to every land the glory of 
France. As we were walking through the great gallery 
of battles, and looking upon one French triumph and 
another, an English lady, whom we met there, and who 
walked on with us, said to me, with becoming modesty, but 
with a face radiant with satisfaction, that there was no vic- 
tories there over the British. The words had hardly passed 
her lips before we came upon five pictures of the siege of 
Torktown and the capture of Cornwallis, by the allied 
armies of France and the United States. She did not make 
a remark about them, nor did I to her. 

The Little Trianon, a favorite little royal chateau, is 
within the grounds of Versailles. It is a charming little 
spot. It was here that is said to have occurred the re- 
markable scene furnishing so striking an instance of great 
events taking their direction from the smallest of causes. 
Napoleon and Josephine were playing at a favorite sport of 
idle hours — the Chinese game of rings. The Empei-or had 
great skill in the game, and felt sui'e to win — and he had 
resolved in his own miud that it should depend upon that 
game whether he would repudiate Josephine. For a wonder 
he missed, and Josephine was likely to win, and he could 



TOMB OF NAPOLEON. 481 

not conceal the chagrin of his disappointment. Josephine 
observed it, and, unconscious of the cause, with her charac- 
teristic affection, allowed him to win — fatal mistake for 
her — perhaps a fatal mistake for him — for soon after that 
the tide turned with him, and soon he was a prisoner. Was 
there ever such a meteor life ! Such a rise, and such a 
fall! — such power, such glory — such fear upon the nations! 
and yet he was not Emperor ten years. In May, 1804, 
he took the imperial title — he was not crowned till Decem- 
ber — and in April, 1814, he abdicated the throne! The 
nephew of his uncle will profit by his example. 

The triumphal arches of St. Denis and St. Martin record 
the glories of Louis XIV., and those de la Place du Ca- 
rousel, and de l'Etoile, are covered with monumental records 
of the great Corsican and his great contemporaries — all ob- 
jects of pride and affection for the whole of France. The 
Invalides, always in sight, proclaims from its lofty dome 
that France takes care of those who suffer in her service. 
Now there are about three thousand veterans there, furnished 
with a home for the final years of the crippled and the 
maimed, and the superannuated. There have been there as 
many as fifteen thousand at once. There hang the flags o e 
all their triumphs, and there, at last, after Elba and St. 
Helena, sleep the remains of Napoleon, in such a mausoleum 
as honors no other modern. When we were looking upon 
that wonderful vault, the vertical sun sent its rays through 
the dome, and the colored glass, giving to the catafalque, the 
sarcophagus and the whole scene, a pale, mild, and tinted 
lustre, like a summer twilight, while a beautiful strain of 
music came soft, and low, and tremulous, from the choir of 
the chapel— which is separated from it only by a grating — 
and filled the whole place with heavenly harmonies. It 
was like the fame of the hero himself — subdued and soft- 
21 



482 PALACES AND CHURCHES. 

ened by his misfortunes — even more interesting in a paler 
light — and fitly chanted by a grateful posterity. 

The Palace of the Tuileries and its garden for the rec- 
reation of the people beneath the windows of Royalty — and 
the delicious garden and grounds of the beautiful palace of 
the Luxembourg — that palace itself with so much to in- 
terest the traveller — its collections of modern paintings, 
waiting the death of the artist, to be transferred to the 
perpetual fame of the Louvre — the appropriate senate 
chamber, its grand entrance and staircase — and the 
throne room, so gorgeous — How imperial all ! 

If one had not formed his taste by studying the chaster 
forms and ornaments of the Christian temples of the graver 
nations of the continent, the churches of the French capital 
would well excite his admiration, and the Madeleine and St. 
Genevieve — formerly the Pantheon — those great expressions 
of the modern French taste, would be objects of his special 
study and wonder — but to me old Notre Dame, so grand, so 
solemn, so historical, so religious, leaves no room in my 
memory for the showy mixtures of heathenism and Chris- 
tianity — of melodrama and mythology. 

The details of sight-seeing, in Paris, cannot be written in 
hurried letters of travel. Its public buildings, and its pub- 
lic institutions, in Paris and its environs — its education — 
its science — its letters — its arts — its industry — its courts of 
justice — its libraries — and its amusements, are innumerable, 
and always new to the cultivated and appreciating mind — 
and its frivolities, for the frivolous and trifling — its grossi- 
eretes, for the coarse and the sensual, and the gross — its 
hant ton, for the stylish — its grace, for the tasteful — its 
fashion, for the fashionable — its luxury, for the extrava- 
gant — its oddities, its novelties, its drolleries, its sorrows and 
its despairs, are always in new manifestations and in infinite 
variety. 



ENGLAND. 

FROM Paris we returned to England, by the old histori- 
cal city of Calais, crossing the channel again, but not 
with the mill-pond sailing which we had before from Folke- 
stone to Boulogne. It was dark and rainy as we picked our 
dangerous way across the quay at Calais, to the low and 
crowded little steamer, which was to bear us over. The 
boat was filled to every berth, and settee, and bench, and 
plank upon the floor, and no sooner were we out at sea 
than we began to feel the roughness of the night — a thun- 
der-storm had come upon us, and brought the short chopped 
sea for which the English channel is so famous. This made 
us a little sick, and many others were dead sick, and to 
crown the cheerlessness of that crowded and tossing little 
craft, a crazy Avoman — sorrowful crazy — religious crazy — 
kept up her moanings the live-long night. That she was 
deserted by God was the key-note of her madness. The 
cabin would, for a while, be all still, except the pelting of the 
rain upon the deck above — the dash of the waves, as they 



484 CROSSING THE CHANNEL. 

broke against the sides, and the rapid sputtering buzz of the 
paddle-wheels, as the roll of the boat threw them nearly out 
of the water, first on one side and then the other — the 
flashes of lightning that rushed in and out through the little 
windows of our*ports, and the long roll, or the sudden peal 
of thunder that followed, made the contrasts desolate 
enough — but the finish to the scene was the Godforsaken 
moans of that poor thing, as ever and anon she exclaimed, 
" God is gone, I shall never see him again," and seemed to 
break down into crushed and quiet despair, till perhaps 
another peal, or another flash, aroused her to another throe. 

The early morning dawned upon us as we neared the 
cliff's of Dover and Dover Castle, embracing within its walls 
thirty-five acres, on " the dread summit of this chalky 
bourne," and, after such a night, it was impossible not to 
recall old Lear, and Cordelia, and Gloster, and Edgar, and 
the mimic scenes of madness to which the elder Kean gave 
such fearful reality. 

After a clambering and dangerous landing from a rough 
sea, on the pier at Dover, slippery with the morning 
drizzle, we took the express train for London, which whirled 
us over the eighty-eight miles in two hours and a quarter, 
and we took our comfortable breakfast at our old quarters — 
Morley's. 

Good-by, French — Good-by, Italian — Good-by, Ger- 
man. Welcome, English ! That noblest of tongues — 
the language of freedom, and popular supremacy — " The 
liberty of unlicensed printing" — you can't say that in any 
language but the English. Freedom of speech — freedom of 
the press — freedom to worship God — freedom to come and 
go without a passport — freedom to receive, and protect, and 
cherish the hunted exiles of despotism, are phrases of our 
mother tongue alone. Since the settlement of America, no 
despot has been permitted to prostitute the English language 



YANKEE DOODLE. 485 

to his iron rule. Charles I. tried it, and the people cut off 
his head — James II. tried it, and the people drove him from 
his kingdom, and he became a fugitive and a vagabond on 
the earth. 

In the quiet of the evening, as I sat in xwy room, looking 
broadly out upon Trafalgar Square, my thoughts ran back 
over my rapid zigzag run through Continental Europe, and 
naturally and inevitably compared the free constitutional 
popular monarchy of England with imperial France, impe- 
rious Austria, and bigoted Italy. I thought of the great 
battles of modern times — those terrible days of slaughter 
that have taken their names from the fields soaked with 
human blood — not one of them was fought on British soil, 
though in some of them the British soldier was in the 
thickest of the battle, and, under British leaders, covered 
their arms with glory. The statues of George IV. and 
Charles I. were fading in the twilight, and the lion of the 
Percy's high born race, and the lofty column and sculptured 
monument of Nelson, whose greatest achievement gave its 
name to the square, were duskily relieved against the sky. 
I was in that dreamy mood in which the will seems to 
give up the mind to the control of association, and images 
come and go with as little sequence as the the phantasma- 
goria of actual dreams— Arms and literature — Chevy Chase, 
and Bannockburn, and Marston Moor — and the Boyne, and 
Wellington, and Cromwell, and Marlborough, and Nelson, 
came and went, till arrested by the strain of a strolling 
musician, who, with a gentle instrument like a flageolet, 
whose tones were quite in harmony with my thoughts, 
struck up the air of Yankee Doodle. Let any one, who for 
months has been absorbed with scenes so unlike anything 
American, judge how, for a moment, everything European 
would vanish even more quickly than a phantasmagoria, and 
home, and friends, and country — the success of our arms, and 



4S6 YANKEE DOODLE. 

the pride of our national glory, would fill his heart with the 
joy of affection, and his eye with those waters that well up 
from the deepest springs of the soul — I was entirely over- 
come by it. I remember freshly when it was fashionable to 
laugh at Yanke» Doodle, as a vulgar air, written to make 
fun of our extempore Yankee soldiers of olden time. How 
it was written by Dr. Shackburgh, or some one else, and 
given to the Yankee soldiers as a celebrated European air, 
to ridicule their fondness for European fashions. Notwith- 
standing all its simplicity, our troops have kept time to 
its measures on all their fields of glory — and it is quite im- 
possible to imagine an air more perfectly fitted to the 
national tone of such a people as ours. As we have 
grown stronger and greater — as the stars and stripes have 
floated higher and higher, over more and more fields of 
triumph, so Yankee Doodle has risen in the scale of meritj 
and, I believe, it is at last discovered to be not a new, nor 
an American air, nor a burlesque, nor a musical drollery — 
but it is found among the most precious musical archives 
of I do not know how many musical nations — preserved, 
and separated, and selected for immortality, by the sifting of 
ages of traditional popular harmony. It is, indeed, among 
the music of the nations. Its chords have vibrated with the 
heartstrings of the people in all ages. The Alpine echoes 
have repeated its strains — it has more than once broken out 
among the ariozo trills and graces of emasculated Italy — 
the Suliote has rallied to it in the forest glades of Greece — 
France has been made insane by it — Cromwell led his troop- 
ers to its resistless quickstep — blind Ziska's Invincible 
Brethren strode to his miraculous triumphs in the spirit of its 
rebellious measures. One writing from this city to New-York, 
in 1848, said— ' ; Oddly enough, the staple air of the ' Grand 
Quadrille of all Nations,' at the Opera House, is Yankee 
Doodle, which pervades the entire composition and gives it 



LONDON. 487 

most of its character." In 1848, how all the nations at the 
sound of its key-note struck off into its harmonies. Let no 
one say with a sneer or a sardonic smile that the strains of 
1848 were short and the music evanescent. The instru- 
ment is not broken — the music is not losfc — the right soul 
knows that it will yet burst forth — no one knows whether in 
years or in ages — in more swelling and universal sympho- 
nies — and in the great contra-dance of nations they will 
take their measure from Yankee Doodle, and constitutional 
liberty will marshal the sets and call the figures. 

London — Londiniau — in ancient Latin Londinium, is now, as 
some one has well said, a province covered with houses. It en- 
joyed something like its present pre-eminence in ancient times. 
Tacitus, eighteen centuries ago spoke of it, as il copia negociato- 
rum ac commealuum maxime celebre," andlater, Marcellinus pre- 
dicted its greatness, " Londinium, veins oppidum quod Augustam 
posteritas appellabit" — "An ancient city which posterity will 
call imperial." It has now a population larger than all 
New-England — larger than New- York, Philadelphia, Brook- 
lyn, Boston, Baltimore, New-Orleans, St. Louis, and Cin- 
cinnati united. The mind is really bewildered in attempt- 
ing to take in such a wilderness of human beings — the 
tastes, pursuits, monuments, institutions, celebrities, and 
utilities of such a growth of two thousand years — all that 
time the great heart of a great nation — on a small undefend- 
ed island — all things considered, the most remarkable nation 
that has ever existed. 

I shall not attempt to sketch the details of that growth, as 
the little city of London has drawn to it and incorporated with 
it the villages and cities that were in its environs, and — one 
after another fused and flowed into one grand mass — have 
made up the vast London of to-day. In the " City" you see 
narrow, and crooked, and inconvenient streets and lanes, 
and ancient architecture of its early periods and tastes, and 



488 THE SIGHTS. 

in the west end, in Belgravia, and Tyburnia, and all the 
new parts of the town, you see the characteristics of modern 
progress. It is sometimes supposed that the Lord Mayor 
of London is the mayor of this great province of combined 
cities and villages called London — but this is not so, he is 
Lord Mayor of only the " city" of London, which is but a 
little spot in the oldest part of London, and contains only 
about one hundred and fifty thousand people, and within 
this " city" there is comparatively little to interest the 
traveller. The great lions are in other portions of London 
— Westminster Abbey, Westminster Hall, and the Houses 
of Parliament, are in the city of Westminster. The Tower 
is in the Tower Hamlets — the great commercial docks are 
still further down the river — and Greenwich Hospital on the 
opposite shore, quite below London — the Crystal Palace is 
at Sydenham — the great parks are all far away from the 
City, and most of the monuments and all the statues are, also, 
outside the city proper. 

We went the grand rounds of the sights — the Parliament 
Houses, the Abbey, the parks and squares, the British 
Museum, the Bank, the Mint, the Crystal Palace, Green- 
wich Hospital, the Tower — every one of which is worthy 
of so great a metropolis of such a nation. Every one of 
them is full of the history of England — which is, also, our 
history — and they are, all, great and characteristic illustra- 
tions of the English mind, and the British nation. Every- 
where, form, and ceremony, and punctilio, have the respect 
and honor of great utilities. As you go to the Tower you 
soon find yourself in the midst of men in the dress and arms 
of the time of Henry VIII. — slashed and many-colored in 
striking contrasts. I supposed they were thus dressed for the 
occasion, as a sort of oddity, but I soon found that they were 
of the essence of the scene — apparently quite as important 
as the Tower itself. So, in another instance in England, 



JAVELIN MEN. 489 

there were stationed at the door of our hotel — for the high 
sheriff of the county had his rooms there — certain strange look- 
ing officials, in the parti-colored slashed dress, and trappings, 
and arms of some hundreds of years ago. I am not enough 
skilled in that sort of antiquities to say of what precise date. 
On inquiry I found that they were javelin men — they were 
armed with javelins of the same ancient date, and attending 
upon the sheriff. When I went into the court, which was 
at that time in session, I perceived these javelin men here and 
there — odd, stiff, and stately — about the court room. This 
prompted further inquiry, and I found they are considered as 
necessary to the administration of justice, as the wigs of the 
judges and the lawyers. They attend upon the sheriff and 
upon the judge — and when the judge on the circuit arrives 
in a county, the sheriff, with an array of javelin men, 
meets him at the county line or the railroad station, and 
with so much of the pomp and circumstance of glorious 
war, escorts him to his quarters. All this is done at the 
expense of the sheriff, who maintains this body of uniform- 
ed modern antiquities, for the purpose of doing honor to the 
judge and making justice respectable. In one or two of 
the counties the gentry and solid men being aware how 
exceedingly ridiculous this mock-heroic display was and how 
onerous it was to the sheriff, in a pecuniary point of view, 
associated together for the purpose of giving some weight 
to their measures of reform, and proposed that the javelin 
men should be dispensed with, and that they themselves, the 
gentry, and men of influence — without expense to the sher- 
iff, and with more honor to the judge, and more respect for 
justice — should form an escort, and body-guard, and calva- 
cade of honor, to the majesty of the law. They did so. 

To this honor the judge bowed in dignified acquiescence, 
but with ill concealed dissatisfaction. The sheriff politely said 
that he hoped the court would believe that he was quite 

21* 



490 JAVELIN MEN. 

willing, himself, to conform to ancient usages, but the asso- 
ciation of which he was a member had in a measure com- 
pelled him to this course. The judge, however, was deter- 
mined not to do nor to say anything hastily, and it was not 
till the next morning, at the opening of the court, that the 
countenance of the judge revealed the subject of his mid- 
night cogitation and sorrow, as he proceeded to express his 
astonishment and indignation at the manner in which the 
representative of her Majesty had been received by the 
sheriff, without javelin men, and that so dangerous a prece- 
dent might not be followed in other counties, he promptly 
fined the sheriff one hundred pounds — five hundred dollars — 
and concluded by expressing the hope that the association 
who had thus led the sheriff astray, would save him from 
pecuniary loss by paying the fine which had been imposed 
upon him. 

The world has many javelin men, but nowhere are they 
so respectable and long-lived as in old England. They are 
an English characteristic — no one knows England and the 
English who has not observed and studied the javelin men — 
they are everywhere — Church, Army, Physic, Law. The 
man that ties up the papers with red tape is a javelin man — 
so is he who turns the crank of the routine in the circum- 
locution office — attempt to touch them, and power and 
precedent will almost curse thee to thy face. 

This is most striking in and about the arrangements of 
the government. You meet at every step some old form, in 
ages past useful as well as agreeable, but now neither one 
nor the other, yet preserved and persisted in, as though the 
safety of the nation depended on it. No woman is allowed 
to enter the House of Commons — no man can get even into 
the gallery without an order from a member, and each mem- 
ber is allowed to give only a very small number of orders — I 
think only two — in any one day, and these only for his 



MR. COBDEN. 491 

own house. On presenting your order you are always told 
the gallery is full to overflowing, but you always find room 
enough — almost no one there. 

We were indebted to the characteristic civility of Mr. 
Cobden for admission to both houses. His own orders had 
already been exhausted, but he procured others for us. He 
did the same, on another occasion, for a young American, 
whom I met and who was lamenting his inablity to get into 
the House of Commons. We shall always remember — with 
the hope of being able to show our sense of it — his great 
politeness in personally escorting us through the Parliament 
Houses, the Chambers of the Lords, and the Commons, the 
Library, the corridors and the lobbies, and committee rooms, 
with personal explanations and descriptions so necessary to 
strangers, and from him so agreeable in manner as well as 
matter. It is quite easy to see why he is so popular and so 
efficient. The simplicity and straightforwardness of his 
character — his gentleness and freedom from pretension and 
from everything like exclusiveness — his putting one entirely 
at ease in intercourse with him- — that great practical sense 
which shows itself in every word, and that inner light of 
thought and reflection — which is constantly shining out and 
revealing his real ability — could not fail to give him that 
strong hold which he has on his constituency and on the 
nation. 

The ladies' gallery of the House of Commons is separated 
from the chamber by a close ornamental grating, so that the 
ladies cannot be seen from the chamber. For some reason, 
which 1 do not know, this exclusion was ordered ages ago, and 
is continued in this new building — and in this age when there 
is no reason for it, and when it seems only rude and ungal- 
lant to the sex which, in generations past, has furnished and is 
now furnishing to the throne monarchs of whom the nation 
will never- cease to be justly proud. The original exclusion, 



492 DECIMAL COINAGE. 

I believe, was total, and the grating is a characteristic 
English mode of reform — evading what they might better 
repeal. The rule of exclusion is still enforced by allowing 
the ladies to enter and putting a grating before them, so that 
they are not there. In the Lords, on the other hand, the 
ladies are openly admitted, while the gentlemen are kept out. 
M. was escorted to a seat in the gallery, while I had a tol- 
erable look from the lobby — as we listened to a debate on a 
modification of the Sunday law, proposed by the Bishop of 
London, and advocated by him, the Duke of Argyle, and 
others. The Lord Chancellor was on the woolsack, and 
Lord Brougham lounging beside him. In the Commons 
we listened to a debate on the Oxford University bill. We 
had no occasion to be ashamed of the comparison with our 
debates at home. I saw in what is called the members' 
gallery a tipsy member — stretched at his length on the 
bench — muttering to himself and likely to become noisy ; lie 
was, however, promptly brought to order by the proper 
officer. 

The practice of examining witnesses before the Parlia- 
mentary committees — on the subject of proposed measures — 
is carried to a greater extent here than with us. The ex- 
pense of getting a railroad charter through a committee here, 
is more than the whole expense of making the road with us. 
The committee-room which I saw, had its tables, its benches, 
&c, for a crowd. 

For a copy of the Report on the Decimal Coinage I was 
indebted to the politeness of Mr. William Brown, the mem- 
ber for Liverpool, who was chairman of the select committee 
on the subject. The testimony taken fills one hundred 
large parliamentary folio pages. Thirty witnesses were ex- 
amined, embracing noblemen, eminent men in the army, 
members of Parliament — the chairman was examined before 
his own committee — scientific men, bankers, and bank 



COURTS OF LAW. 493 

directors, and men of various classes of scientific and theo- 
retical or practical judgment on the question. So intelli- 
gent and practical a committee could not fail to report in 
favor of reforming the currency by adopting a decimal 
currency. It remains to be seen whether the javelin men 
are strong enough to defeat it. It seems to me that England, 
France, and the United States, might so modify the sov- 
ereign, the napoleon, and the eagle, and the subordinate 
coins — without changing their names — as to make them 
decimal and of corresponding value in all those countries, 
and thus reform the currency of the world — to the great 
convenience of all, especially of commercial men. The 
difficulty in introducing a change in the currency is greatly 
overrated. 

I dropped in at the House of Lords on a law day — the 
House sitting as the High Court of Appeals — a cause 
being on argument. There was no one there but the Lord 
Chancellor, and theclerks, and the counsel in the case. His 
lordship was not on the woolsack, but in a chair some 
twenty feet from the counsel. Mr. Fitzroy Kelly was 
arguing — he spoke exceedingly low, in a conversational tone 
and manner. I could not hear what he said, although within 
twenty feet feet of him — behind him. 

The courts of law were not in session, and I lost the op- 
portunity of seeing them in Westminster Hall. They are 
entered by several plain and unpretentious doors from the 
great Westminster Hall, so famous — said to be the largest and 
finest room in Europe without pillars — two hundred and sev- 
enty feet long, and seventy-four feet wide, and of proportion- 
ate height-*-furnishing easy standing room for more than six 
thousand persons. King Henry n., six hundred years ago, is 
said to have entertained in it six thousand poor persons, as a 
New Year's benevolence — King Richard II. entertained ten. 
thousand persons a day for several days — his supplies for 



494 COURTS OF ADMIRALTY. 

each day's luncheon being twenty-eight oxen, three hundred 
sheep, and fowls, &c, without number. 

The Court of Admiralty is held at the Doctors' Commons 
in the city, in a retired place among narrow and crooked 
streets. I looked in to see its men and its usages — Dr." 
Lushington was on the bench. There were first, motions 
and orders in Prize causes, and then hearings in Instance 
causes. I heard Sir John Harding and Dr. Spinx argue for 
the libellant and Dr. Bayard for the defendant in a case of 
materials. Their manner was not very loud, but earnest and 
emphatic. I noticed that they addressed the judge as 
"you," not "your honor," as with us. The advocates, in 
wigs and gowns, sat on each side of the judge — on the 
same level with him — their seats and desks before them being 
but a horseshoe extension of the judge's seat and desk. On 
the floor below, the proctors sit round a long bar table — at the 
end of which farthest from the judge, sits the register, 
who calls the causes distinctly and talks, loudly to the judge, 
who is about twent}' feet from him. 

The advocates ai*e doctors of the civil law and called doc- 
tors. They have a good public advocate library adjoining 
the court-room. Their own chambers or offices — which 
are quite small — are clustered around the court-room. 

We left London for Brighton, to take a glimpse of that 
celebrated watering-place, which is reached in less than two 
hours by rail — passing through the South Downs. The 
Downs are large tracts of rolling and bare land, with a 
comparatively light pasturage, and devoted mainly to the 
feeding of sheep. The South Down mutton is deservedly 
famous for its excellent quality. In maritime language — as 
in Black-eyed Susan — 

"All in the Downs the fleet was moored'' — 

the Downs means the extensive and excellent roadstead for 
ship?, extending from Dover north. 



BRIGHTON PORTSMOUTH. 495 

Brighton looks out south upon the sea. The stretch of 
the beach is long and uninteresting, to those who have seen 
the striking and beautiful beaches of our shores. From the 
beach inshore is a fine strip of " England's fadeless green" — 
then the road along the shore — then beautiful terraces and 
squares, and courts, and crescents, and places, and streets of 
lofty Grecian and Italian architecture — done in stucco of 
light color. Much as the Oriental Pavilion, built by George 
III., when Prince Regent, has been criticised, all must 
agree that the building and grounds are a great ornament to 
the town — which is otherwise very attractive. 

The noble sea-wall — twenty or thirty feet high — stretch- 
ing a mile or so along a portion of the beach, and from 
which runs out into the deeper water, beyond the shoals, a 
long suspension pier, adds much to the beauty of the grand 
view, which takes in the Isle of Wight in the western dis- 
tance. The view from the water, landward, must be ex- 
ceedingly fine. We did not leave the shore — requiring all 
our short stay to take the agreeable drives and walks along 
the sea — among the carriages, sedan chairs, donkey rides, 
and goat drives. The baths are off the beach, but while we 
were there, we saw nothing to compare with the bathing 
scenes of Newport and Cape May. The town has tho 
freshness of a modern town. 

From Brighton, a short hour and a half brought us to 
the old naval station of Portsmouth. The cliffs of chalk 
of this part of the country, furnish nodules of flint in such 
quantity that houses are built of the dark balls, laid in courses 
in mortar, and sometimes the nodules are split and laid with 
the fractured side out. These buildings have a novel but 
pretty effect. Portsmouth is strongly and beautifully forti- 
fied. Its streets are irregular, narrow, and old-fashioned — 
soldiers and sailors at every turn, and the waterman's cry, 
"Want a boat?" hails you at every landing. Gosport is 



496 THE ROYAL GEORGE. 

just across a little strait, a few rods wide. It is all forti- 
fications, of the most beautiful and the strongest character. 
Buoys, in every direction, give their warning of shoals and 
dangers. One — the buoy of the Royal George — mai-ks the 
place of that terrible accident, which sent her to the bottom 
without notice. It warns of the danger of the sunken 
wreck, and of the danger of the carelessness which pro- 
duced an accident that sent a shock through the three 
kingdoms. 

A noble three-decker — a tall admiral of one hundred and 
eight guns, Justin from a cruise — was heeled over a little, for 
repairs, on her side. It was a fair day and a smooth sea. Her 
crew and her officers were all on board. She was the Admi- 
ral's flag ship, and the brave old tar, Admiral Kempenfeldt, 
was writing in the cabin. The ship was filled with women and 
children from the shore,come on board for the visit of welcome 
and joy to their fathers, and husbands, and sweethearts — no 
thought of danger entered the mind of any one. The ship 
was heeled a little too far over — a flaw of wind struck 
her, and heeled her a little more — her heavy guns ran down 
to leeward and heeled her still more, and, before any one 
dreamed of danger, the sea poured in to her open gunports 
and siie filled, and went down in a twinkling, taking with 
her the admiral, his officers and men and visitors to the 
number of about one thousand, all of whom perished, except 
a few who were on the upper deck and were picked up by 
boats from the neighboring fleet. 

Between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight is Spithead, 
the great naval station and anchorage of the British Navy, 
and where the grand royal naval reviews take place. During 
our stay, there were comparatively few vessels here, and all 
was plain, quiet, and unostentatious. An excursion of a day 
to the Isle of Wight, gave us a returning look out upon Ports- 
mouth, Portsea, Gosport and Spithead. The green fields 



ISLE OF WIGHT. 497 

and rich foliage of the island shores — Osborne House, the 
rural summer palace of the Queen, with the royal flag flying, 
to indicate that her Majesty was now residing there — Nor- 
ris Castle, built by the proprietor of Bell's Weekly Messen- 
ger — its ivy-mantled battlements — its roads, winding through 
broad and beautiful lawns, and its grand effect in imitation 
of an ancient castle, presented a delightful succession of 
scenes. 

We had a charming drive out past Osborne House, to 
Whippingham, where is the humble little church in which 
the Queen and the royal family go to church, and to the pic- 
tux-esque old ruins of Carisbrook Castle — twelve hundred 
years old — embracing within the fosse and outer walls some 
twenty acres of land — its towers and battlements — hoary 
with centuries, rising loftily from a hilltop — contrast beau- 
tifully with the ivy green that clings so tendrilly to its 
walls. This is the castle in which Charles I. was confined, 
after his flight in 1647. 

From Portsmouth, my associations of Stonehenge and 
Salisburg Plain, urged me irresistibly to visit that celebrated 
locality. Leaving the railroad at the old city of Salisbury, 
we were glad to take a deliberate survey of the fine old 
Salisbury Cathedral, around which are situated the finest 
modern buildings in the city. If we had not had a surfeit 
of churches during our travels, we should have counted 
greatly upon the pleasure of studying this pile, reared un- 
mistakably by the wonderful old cathedral builders, and as 
it was, we enjoyed highly the pose and symmetry of the 
whole, as well as the beauty of its details. It is, I believe, 
conceded to be the finest in England, and its beautiful spire 
is one of the highest in the world, being more than four 
hundred feet high. The length of the church is four hun- 
dred and eighty feet. It contains a large number of inter- 
esting sepulchral monuments. I looked for that familar 



498 SALISBURY — OLD SARUM. 

epitaph — the finest ever written — by Ben Jonson, on the 
Countess of Pembroke : 

" Underneath this sable hearse, 
Lies the subject of all verse ; 
Sidney's sister — Pembroke's mother. 
Death, ere thou hast slain another, 
Fair and wise and good as she, 
Time shall throw his dart at thee." 

My guide-book says it is to be found here — I was curious 
to see it, and after looking the cathedral through two or 
three times without finding it, I asked the verger, an intelli- 
gent looking man, in black coat and white cravat, for the 
tomb of the Countess of Pembroke, on which was Ben 
Jonson's celebrated epitaph, repeating to him a line of it. 
He said there were tombs of many of the family there, but 
they were without inscriptions. I showed him the book — 
he said that his attention had been called to it before — that 
the book was in error — he knew the epitaph well, but it 
was not there, and he closed with the interesting informa- 
tion that many supposed the epitaph was not by Jonson j 
but by Thomas Moore ! 

From Salisbury to Stonehenge, up the Avon, across the 
South Downs, is a beautiful drive, which no curious trav- 
eller should fail to take. Large flocks of South Down sheep 
roam over the downs, under the care of their shepherd. 
These sheep are a peculiar breed. They have small heads, 
which are black. Their feet are also black. 

On the way we passed by old Sarum — Sorhiodunum — the 
venerable head of rotten boroughs, up to the time of the 
Reform Bill of twenty years ago. In ages now forgotten, 
Sarum was a corporate town, of considerable size, entitled 
to send two members of Parliament. But Sarum dwin- 
dled and crumbled, till, ages ago, Sarum was no more — but 
not so her representation — as her population diminished, 



ROTTEN BOROUGHS. 499 

and finally went out entirely, and walls, and streets, and 
houses vanished away — the representation was kept up to the 
old mark, and the "last man'' sent his two members to 
Parliament as before. There was no longer any borough — 
any town — any houses — there was a tree, under which the 
voting was done, while voting there was, and finally the 
two members were sent by a nonresident nobleman, owner of 
the estate. As the reformers attacked the rotten boroughs, 
of which Sarum was only a perfect specimen, the imagi- 
nary javelin men bristled up, and declared that the constitu- 
tion was in danger, if you touched their slashed doublets 
and breeches, or presumed to shut them out from sending 
their two members to Parliament — but Sarum and fifty-four 
other boroughs, together sending one hundred and twelve 
members, were offered up a sacrifice to appease the bloody 
demon of reform, while nearly all the real evils of the un- 
equal representation, were still allowed to exist. This, 
however, is English reform — slowly, surely, considerately — 
the first step is rarely more than to show that the abuses 
are not absolutely sacred. After another round of years, 
another step further forward to a more real and substantial 
reform, will show that the first step, after all, was one of 
great importance and significance, for there will then be no 
cry of a violation of the constitution — the questions will 
be those of justice and expediency — and in the train of that 
first nominal reform, accomplished after defeats, dissolutions, 
and prorogations, will come, at some futui'e time, a repre- 
sentation nominally equal, just, and popular. 

The Stonehenge ruin is altogether the most solemn ruin 
which I have seen. In majestic silence, in the midst of a 
vast plain — yet not a plain, but rather a rolling prairie — 
covered with thin and short grass, without house or tree, 
lie now in cyclopean grandeur those vast stones of rude and 
simple workmanship, betraying plainly the form and 



500 STONEHENGE. 

outlines of an ancient and mysterious druidical temple — 
stones, weighing seventy tons, more than twenty feet high, 
terminated in rude tenons, and surmounted by equally large 
stones pierced with rude mortices, by which the vast cir- 
cular frame was locked together. Some of these transverse 
beams and upright pillars have fallen — in some cases pros- 
trate, in others at various angles of inclination to the 
horizon. The larger stones are of a light gray, firm, com- 
pact sandstone, hard and impracticable, while the smaller 
ones are of a bluish hornblende granite, a still more ditfi- 
cult material. Where did those stones come from ? — 
how were they brought here ? — how were they wrought, 
and with what tool % — how transported and lifted into the 
frame-work of that vast masonry ? — are the first questions to 
which there is no answer. What were the form and purpose 
of the structure is perhaps more easily divined, for the 
work can be restored in the mind's eye and upon paper, but 
the details of its uses, and what has mouldered away in the 
unknown ages that have swept over it, there is no ruin or 
record to tell us. The double door-ways — the grand ex- 
terior circle — the smaller concentric one within, and the ap- 
parent place for a grand central altar, suggested their bloody 
rites. Mounds, of various sizes, are scattered about for 
miles. I thought I could see, in the plain around this 
temple — commencing at a great distance, and winding nearer 
and nearer in concentric spirals, a sort of raised path — per- 
haps it was all in the imagination, as was certainly that 
long, and winding, and mysterious procession that, in my 
imaginary thought, seemed to be drawing nearer to that 
central temple, as they bore along the human victims for a 
vast druidical holocaust. 

On and about this great prairie hares are in great abun- 
dance, and gentlemen resort here from all parts of the three 
kingdoms, to hunt these timid and defenceless little animals. 



WILTON. 501 

This is one of the manly sports of old England, which, we 
are truly told, do much to form the English character. Bear- 
baiting, dog-fighting, and sparrow-mumbling, are the kin- 
dred manly sports of the lower classes, and the teachings of 
such sports, show their proper effect in the brutalities which 
have too often disgraced the Army, the Parliament, and the 
Throne of Great Britain. The bull-fights of Spain — the 
fighting with wild beasts in Rome, have been often the sub- 
ject of severe criticism, but there may be something noble in 
a strife between noble beasts and noble men of savage na- 
tures, but I can hardly conceive anything less worthy of a 
civilized man, than riding in steady hot haste, all the day, 
day after day, to enjoy the torment of a terror-stricken hare, 
fleeing for dear life from dogs and men. 

We returned by way of Wilton — the place of Wilton 
carpets and Wilton House, the beautiful seat of Sidney Her- 
bert. At Wilton this gentleman has erected, at his own 
expense, a stone church, which is a gem of ecclesiastical 
architecture and furniture. It is well worth a visit to see 
done here, in miniature, what is done on a grand scale in 
Italy. The external walls are of cut brown stone, and the 
interior is finished up with Caen stone, finely cut, in fitting or- 
namental finish, of considerable variety and of simple beauty. 
About the altar are spiral columns and mosaics from Italy, 
and precious marbles from Palestine. Appropriate passages 
of scripture are cut, in Saxon letter, in various places about 
the interior — on the front of the gallery are the simple and 
significant words, inscribed upon the base, " All things are 
thine, and of thine own have we given thee." It is not 
easy to imagine a more beautiful offering to God, than such 
a temple for his worship, and it reminds one of the grander 
gift of the greater wealth of Solomon, in the days of his 
highest wisdom, and his purest devotion. Perhaps Sidney 
Herbert, when he dies, may find, in this church, his grave 



a 02 OXFORD. 

and his monument. Should this be his last resting-place, 
what a legacy he will leave, not to his heir-at-law, but to all 
those who, in the lapse of future time, shall look back to 
him as their kinsman — especially if, when they read, " Here 
lies the body," they may look round and take in the spirit 
of the place, and say, with truth, "and here is the soul of 
Sidney Herbert." 

Oxford well repaid the two days that we gave to looking 
at its many objects of interest. A city of only thirty thou- 
sand inhabitants, yet in buildings and grounds — the ancient 
and hoary, and the modern and fresh in long and lofty piles 
— the Gothic arches and crypts — the Grecian colonnades, 
and the Italian facades in elaborate beauty — have been 
combined, in the growth of ages, to add to the attractions of 
this remarkable little town. All along through the last six 
hundred years have the various colleges, which constitute 
the University, been founded and endowed by kings, and 
lords, and commoners, who desired to devote a portion of 
their property to the promotion of sound learning and 
higher education. Each college was in the beginning, 
according to the taste of its time, made a temple of science 
and religion — and modern taste has used the 'wealth of 
more recent donors in building the new colleges and in 
improving the older ones in a style and finish worthy of so 
proud a monarchy, and made them fit memorials of their 
founders, their teachers, and their pupils — great men scatter- 
ed along through the history of the three kingdoms — the 
lustre of whose names returns to this seat of learning some 
of the glory which they owed to her teachings. Its public 
institutions, its monuments, and architectural attractions, are 
enough to be the boast of a metropolitan city. Twenty- 
four colleges — colleges, and halls — and the other buildings 
connected with the University—scattered all over the city 
— each one a great public monument — are occupied by 
about six thousand members, all nominally and a large pro- 



THE COLLEGES. 503 

portion of them really devoted to the pursuits of high letters. 
There are seventeen parishes in the city and suburbs, and the 
parish churches are an important addition to the beauty and 
interest of the city — and the numerous libraries, museums, 
and other public buildings, are all of them worthy to con- 
stitute an integral and harmonious part of Oxford, and 
make it the greatest monument to learning in the world. 

Had all the University buildings been erected together in 
one vast connected building or cluster of buildings, it 
might have been in some respects more striking, but I think 
the variety of the actual arrangement is to be preferred. 
From Magdalen College to St. John's College is about a 
mile and a half, thence to Christ Church is about a mile, 
and thence to Magdalen again is about half a mile, and 
within a triangle of these dimensions — in the heart of the 
city — are all the University buildings. Wherever you walk, 
and at every turn, and on either hand, rise before you the 
towers, and domes, and venerable walls of these various 
colleges and halls, diffusing thus their sacred glory over the 
town, entirely blinding your eyes to the commoner build- 
ings of the streets, and giving a greater and more adequate 
idea of the great purpose and the vast perennial achievement 
of Oxford. Each of these colleges is a separate corpora- 
lion, on a separate and different foundation or constitution 
— and they all form, also, together one great corporation, 
with a constitution and charter of its own. This double 
government and constitution easily reminds us of a similar 
characteristic of our State and National governments, and is 
suggestive also of similar advantages. It is quite easy to 
see that six thousand members of the same college, all sub- 
mitted to the same routine of government, and the same 
details of college life, might be subjected to difficulties 
which would not be so likely to occur if they were divided 
into four-and-twenty subordinate yet independent corpora- 



504 THE UNIVERSITV BUILDINGS. 

tions — each with its own esprit du corps — its own routine of 
daily life, and its own local ambitions — individual rivalry and 
corporate rivalry, being subject to the ultimate decision of 
the examinations, prizes, and degrees of the grand imperium 
imperiorwn. This grand corporation has also its buildings 
and appliances for the purposes common to all — the 
University Printing Office — a grand and beautiful pile, such 
as the successors of Faijst and Guttenburg have never 
before seen elsewhere, occupied with the common labors of 
their trade — the Schools, an ancient and exceedingly in- 
teresting quadrangle, or suite of buildings and rooms — con- 
taining the Examination Plall, where are conducted the 
examinations — one room for the paper examinations, and 
another for the viva voce — Convocation Hall, in which are 
held the sittings of the Convocation which is the grand council 
and executive committee of the University and elects the 
member of Parliament — the Congregation Hall, where are 
held the sittings of the Congregation, the literary senate of 
the University, which grants degrees, and graces, and dis 
pensations — and the Theatre, in which the great occasions 
are held — exceedingly imposing and beautiful — the Theatre 
of Marcellus at Rome is its model, and it will seat three thou- 
sand persons. His Royal Highness, on his first visit to Oxford, 
with Her Majesty, was worthily received, with all tho 
honors, but on a later occasion, I was told, he evaded the 
crowd that thronged to see him in the passage, by which he 
was expected to enter, and made his entry by_ a more pri- 
vate way, and in consequence, when the degree of D. C. L. 
was conferred upon him, he was hissed by some of them 
in the Theatre — at which he and Her Majesty took offence, 
and have never visited Oxford since. In the Schools also 
are the great museums and galleries — the scientific and 
artistic collections belonging to the University — not embra- 
cing those of the colleges, each of which has collections of its 



POLITICAL REFUGEES. 505 

own. Each college has, also, its library in its own building, 
but the grand library of Oxford — the Library of the Uni- 
versity — is in the Schools— the Bodleian Library— through 
which we walked in company with our reverend escort, 
who pointed out to us its" various departments and some 
of its rarer curiosities. He pointed to a quiet gentleman, 
pursuing his researches at a reading desk in one of the alcoves 
of the library — he was one of those powerful political con- 
spirators who are so often compelled to seek refuge in the 
den of the British Lion, when the failure of their schemes 
reveals their purposes, and the brotherhood of despotism pur- 
sues them through all its diplomatic arrangements. I look 
with pride upon this pertinacious and dogged independence 
of the British nation in this respect. No alliances, offensive 
and defensive — no political arrangements or associations with 
other nations — no prospect of commercial or political 
advantage, and no threats, or fears of the cold shoulder, or 
the scowling brow of outsiders, has so much as tempted her 
to entertain the proposal to drive from her protection or to 
surrender up the political offenders of other nations, who 
have sought shelter upon her open and accessible shores. 
There have been men enough in public stations of authority, 
in Great Britain, whose despotic natures would have led 
them to do it, but the people would allow no rulers to do it. 
This is one of the many things which show the weight of 
the English people in all her statesmanship — they are the 
nation — they are the real rulers. 

If this were destined to reach Oxford, I should take 
more pleasure in expressing my obligation to Mr. B., one of 
the fellows of Queen's College — eminent for his great learn- 
ing — for his personal civilities in showing us through that 
venerable establishment, and to Bev. Mr. H. , who in like 
manner accompanied us to St. Peter's in the East, the 
most venerable church in Oxford, with its curious and 

99 



506 TABLE TALK. 

interesting crypt of the time of the •Saxons — to Trinity 
walks and the Bodleian Library — and whose politeness and 
information will long rest agreeably on our memories. We 
made his acquaintance accidentally, in the Charity School of 
St. Peter's in the East, and after stepping to his room and 
putting on the regulation university cap, he was our voluntary 
guide and companion for a considerable portion of the day. 
Our only other guide was one whose services we procured 
immediately after our arrival — a simple and garrulous old 
man, whose desire to flatter our national vanity may be 
judged from the following specimen of his talk, as he led us 
around : 

V One thing 1 can say — I have been guide here near forty 
years — I have all kinds of persons to serve in that way — a 
great many Americans — but I never found one of them to 
lie — Frenchmen will tell fifty lies to one truth, so will Por- 
tuguese. The greatest traveller you ever had in America 
was Sir Christopher Columbus. Oh, he was a wonderful 
fine man. I never found him wrong in any of his writings, 
or what he did." 

In the Colleges reside the officers and students — the stu- 
dents in small college rooms — the fellows also — and they 
dine together in the long dining hall — the fellows and higher 
officers and instructors at a table across the end of the 
room, raised above the level of the main floor, and the 
students at tables down each side of the hall. An anec- 
dote — told, I believe, by Bristed — of such a table at Cam- 
bridge, illustrates the character of the place and the style 
of conversation at a university table. When Dr. Whewell 
came to the head mastership at Cambridge, he brought with 
him his reputation for knowing very well a good deal of 
almost everything, and he did not fail to show this supe- 
riority in the topics introduced at the table. Many were 
exceedingly vexed, and they combined to cram specially, for 



INFLUENCE OF THE UNIVERSITIES. 507 

an out of the way subject, not likely to be familial- to the 
reverend doctor of divinity, and to introduce it at the table, 
and enjoy his embarrassment at not being able to take the 
lead. They selected the game of chess, and each of the 
conspirators studied the subject, ransacking the encyclopae- 
dias in the library, and finally, fully and freshly prepared, 
the subject was introduced, and, one after another, the con- 
spirators — scattered about the table — took part in an inter- 
esting and learned discussion of the history, anecdotes, and 
character of that ancient and beautiful game. Dr. Whewell 
was silent, and their triumph was complete, till, as the sub- 
ject flagged, the doctor quietly remarked, " Gentlemen, I 
see you have been studying an article on chess, which I 
wrote for the Encyclopaedia when I was a young man.'' 
The effect can be imagined. 

I have sometimes thought that the English universities 
could hardly, with propriety, be considered as universi- 
ties, in comparison with the Continental universities. I 
think differently now. For the English people — English in- 
stitutions, habits and modes of thought being considered — 
they seem to be as near perfect as possible. It seems to me, 
that their operation and effect being to bring together large 
numbers of students, who have been fitted to enter one of 
the colleges, and of course have a large amount of knowl- 
edge and of cultivation in higher learning, all of whom are 
to go the round of university life together, residing within the 
college walls, and all constantly subject to the influences 
which must pervade such a seat of learning, and which 
must strike into even the least susceptible, all must inevit- 
ably take in, by mere absorption, an amount of cultiva- 
tion, of the greatest value to them and to the society in 
which they are to be cast, and a very large number will 
make the most of all the facilities for learning, and become 
really so learned and accomplished as to confer lasting honor 



508 MODE AND AIDS OP STUDY. 

on the university and the country. There never was a 
nation whose institutions were more admirably framed to 
accomplish their characteristic purpose and perpetuate 
themselves, than the English nation — that purpose is the 
elevating the few above the many, and then fortifying them 
in their elevation. Such is the character and tendency of 
her universities. All study as much as they please, and no 
more — there is no calling to account for idleness, and there 
are no recitations. Every one is judged by his examina- 
tions — both by his extempore written answers to written 
questions, and afterward by viva voce examinations. The 
teacher is not a mere hearer of recitations, nor a lecturer, 
but he is an instructor, a teacher, an aid. No one can at- 
tain the position and honors of high excellence but by a 
course of the most laborious study, and that, too, aided by 
the private teacher, who in no sense corresponds with the 
tutor in our institutions — he is the private hired assistant of 
the student — he is an accomplished and learned man in the 
courses of the university — he sits by the side of the student 
in his room, and by his personal assistance — his direct incul- 
cations and his friendly and well-timed explanations, elucida- 
tions and reiterations — carries forward the student with the 
acceleration and certainty of their united ability. Those 
who thus strive for the highest excellence, and its prizes and 
rewards, are of course few, very few, compared with the 
whole, and their scholarship and cultivation are such as are 
never approached in our institutions. But these few — aris- 
tocratic as England is — let it not be supposed that they 
belong to the favored classes alone. If 

" Their ancient and ignoble Wood 

Have crept through plebeians ever since the flood " — 

or if it can be traced no farther than to parents, the most 
ignorant and obscure of the " down trodden and toiling mil- 



BIRMINGHAM. 509 

lions " — if in personal scholarship the student outstrip his 
fellows, he will bear away the academic honors from his less 
meritorious, but more titled or nobler competitors — although 
in the common routine of social and even academic life, they 
may enjoy, as they do, many peculiar privileges and dis- 
tinctions — and if, in after life, he make good the promise of 
his early distinction, he will be certain to be invited to the 
high places of national honor. 

On our journey to the north, the pleasant memories of 
Oxford left us little relish for Birmingham, and Derby, and 
Sheffield, to each of which we devoted half a day, and each 
of which furnish abundant subjects for observation, and 
historical association and reflection. Birmingham has two 
hundred and fifty thousand people, and is the seat of eight 
hundred different manufacturing trades. It has also its his- 
tory of centuries, from the battle of Evesham — six hundred 
years ago — to the great conservative riot of 1791. Bir- 
mingham, all along inclined to liberty and reform, had at 
the time of the French revolution of 1791, its distinguished 
reformers, who celebrated in a dinner their sympathy with 
the triumph of liberty. The conservatives — the friends of 
Church and State — determined to show their indignation at 
such a manifestation of the rights of free-born Englishmen, 
and made Birmingham the scene of such a riot as would not 
be equalled by all the riots in all the United States during 
three quarters of a century, if embodied into one great 
scene of destruction and outrage. Libraries and works of 
art, and choice manuscripts, and houses and churches, with 
their smoke by day, and their flames by night, for several 
days, added to the desolation of the town, made frightful by 
the excesses of mobs of rioters of both sexes. Troops of horse 
from London finally restored order. Birmingham, however, 
is most interesting as a manifestation of that vast creation 
of capital and power which is the result of mechanical and 
manufacturing thrift. 



510 DEKBY — SHEFFIELD. 

Derby, too, has its history of near a thousand years. It 
is now little more than a thriving manufacturing town of 
forty thousand inhabitants — better known for its horse 
races than for its history. 

Sheifield is humble, in dwellings and streets, as are all the 
manufacturing places, because, as a whole, they are but 
great aggregations of operatives and industrials, who have 
multiplied as manufactures prospered, and filled new streets 
with unpretentious and low framed-dwellings, as the town 
has developed and spread to one hundred and forty thousand 
souls — but, aside from its manufactures in metal, it has 
little to repay a halt of half a day. It has its historical 
memories, but the monuments are obliterated. Here is the 
prison where James Montgomery was confined for publish- 
ing harmless political squibs, and here he died last year at 
the age of eighty-two. I take from an old English news- 
paper of a few years ago, the following in relation to this 
region — " Every newspaper we open is full of the symptoms 
of a feverish state of the country. If a civil war raged in 
the land we could hardly receive from the seat of hostilities 
more alarming accounts than such as the newspapers daily 
supply from the disturbed districts in the north of England. 
Tumultuous risings — not mobs of an hour or two, easily put 
down by a magistrate and half a dozen constables — but 
riots of two or three days' continuance — take place in defi- 
ance of strong bodies of armed police, and dangerous mobs 
have been charged by infantry with fixed bayonets, yet have 
returned to the attack reckless and infuriated. Attempts 
have been made to rescue prisoners — to set fire to public 
buildings, and to stone magistrates and police to death. 
Gangs of men, women, and children, have forced their way 
into factories, stopped the works, and compelled peaceably 
disposed persons to turn out with them. Policemen with 
their truncheons are mere sport for a populace becoming 



TOKK- 511 

familiar with bayonets and daggers, and these scenes have 
occurred in many large and populous places and districts — 
Manchester, Rochdale, Bolton, Stockport, Bury, Heywood, 
Middletown, Macclesfield, Nottingham, and Sheffield. The 
judges on the circuit are guarded by regular troops — special 
constables are appointed by thousands, and the yeomanry 
are called out, but the main reliance is on hussars and 
dragoons." I have noted these disturbances in the social 
history of our venerable mother not with any malicious 
purpose to detract from the deserved glory of her great 
name. It is only in free running streams that such ripples 
becomes so conspicuous and troublesome — they are evidences 
of life, not of death — of recuperation, not of destruction. 
They are the whiz of the steam as the safety valve opens — no 
country of popular power is entirely free from them. I have 
referred to them only to show that in the matter of mobs and 
riots the precocious daughter that flaunts her stripes and 
stare beyond the seas, has not even approached her great pro- 
genitor, who sits so proudly and firmly on her four thrones 
— England, and her first annexations, Scotland, Ireland, 
and Wales. 

York— ancient York — the Roman Eboracum — was our 
next halt. Seventeen hundred years ago it was a principal 
Roman station, and it is said to have been then more than 
one thousand years old. The Emperor Severus lived here 
in a Roman palace with the appointments of a Roman court, 
and died here — here Caracalla murdered his brother — Con- 
stantine the Great was born here — and as a sort of sacred 
capital it bore its share in the civil wars of England — many 
of its old walls and other ruins are still seen, and those in 
good preservation are used as public promenades. The city 
prison is an old tower supposed to have been built by the 
Romans. There are numerous and interesting old churches 
— the Cathedral— the world-renowed York Minster — being 



512 NEWCASTLE. 

of course, the most interesting of them all. York has had 
ninety-two archbishops, commencing with Paulinus, a. d. 
625. 

The present Minster is about five hundred years old — 
some portions are older — it was founded twelve hundred 
years ago, and through ages has becdme what it is — the 
largest and noblest church in the three kingdoms. Free 
from the characteristic ornaments and finish of a Roman 
Catholic church, and in keeping with the greater simplicity 
and less ceremonial observances of the English Church — its 
great dimensions — its lofty groined arches, its majestic col- 
umns, and beautiful Gothic finish, are exceedingly grand 
and solemn — it is five hundred and twenty-four feet long, 
two hundred and twenty-two feet wide in the transept, 
and ninety feet high. 

Our approach to Newcastle was in the dusk of the early 
evening through Gateshead, crossing the bridge to Newcastle 
— over Stephenson's stupendous bridge, one hundred .and 
twenty feet high. The dusky landscape was one of the 
most striking I had ever looked upon — numerous fires were 
burning all around — furnaces, coal pits, and coke ovens, 
sending up flames of fire, and lurid, sulphurous smoke 
— thirty of them, perhaps, in a row, then as many more 
scattered around — tall chimneys, and steam engines, and 
long lines of coal and coke cars, and windmills here and 
there tossing their giant arms in the air — and the city 
beyond the smoke and fire, with its spires, and towers, 
and castles, and flags, made the whole exceedingly striking. 
After our evening refreshment in the hotel, we started out 
for a walk in the beautiful and bright northern moonlight, 
which now added its silvery lustre to everything — the 
venerable old tower of the time of the Conqueror, if not of 
the Romans — the old Church of St. Nicholas, with its ven- 
erable spire, its cupola like a coronet, and its illuminated 



RICHARD GRAINGER. 513 

clock dial — the old parts of the town, very old, narrow, 
crooked, subterranean, and dark, in the strongest contrast 
with the new portions, which are of unusual beauty. 

Kicbard Grainger — a charity boy — has here reared to 
himself — in the improvements of his native town — a monu- 
ment worthy to commemorate his remarkable qualities and 
his unexampled success. He served his time as a house- 
carpenter's apprentice, and as soon as he was out of his time, 
1819, took upon himself the responsibilities of a master, and 
began to realize the object of his early ambition — which 
was no other than to improve and embellish Newcastle. 
First, two houses — then a side of a street — then Eldon Square, 
after Lord Eldon — then Leazes Terrace, of one hundred and 
thirty houses — then the Arcade and the Corn Exchange — 
then he purchased twelve acres, at twenty thousand dollars 
an acre, and other property of about the same value, and 
cleared, excavated, and graded the whole, and within five 
years laid it out in broad streets — nine streets — and covered 
it with private and public buildings of great individual 
beauty and of general harmony — streets of palaces of cut 
stone and rich Grecian architecture. The principal of 
these streets — Grey street, after Earl Grey — about a quarter 
of a mile long, eighty feet wide, and laid out in a curve — is 
one of the finest streets I have seen. At the end of it, opposite 
the Exchange, is the lofty column with a statue, raised by 
subscription in honor of Earl Grey, the persevering and vic- 
torious champion of parliamentary reform. Newcastle thus 
honored reform for the sake of the principle, for her own 
representation was not changed by it, and her two thousand 
and five hundred voters had no more members of Parliament 
by the reform bill than did each of twenty others, which 
had only from thirteen to seventy voters each, and of all the 
one hundred and eighty-six boroughs in England, out of 
London, only ten had more voters than Newcastle. 
22* 



514 ALNWICK CASTLE. 

John and William Scott — sons of a coal-fitter — were 
born in Newcastle. Both of them — the one as Lord 
Eldon, and. the other as Lord Stowell — have left behind 
them names of which England will never cease to be proud. 
Akenside and Collingwood were also born and educated 
here. So, however, it has long been in England, her noblest 
names, her most useful great men, those destined to live 
longest in the memory of posterity, have been those who 
have started from plebeian extraction, and by the force of 
native energies alone, have earned titles as proud as those 
that have come down from the Conquest. 

Newcastle is practically, although not geographically, the 
centre of the great coal field from which most of the coal 
of England is mined. The field extends some sixty miles 
north and south, some twenty or thirty miles inland, and 
how far under the sea, is unknown. The pits or shafts are 
of various depths, according to locality, from one hundred 
and twenty feet to sixteen hundred feet — from these deepest 
shafts the galleries and diggings run directly under the sea. 
About three millions of tons of coal are shipped annually 
from the mouth of the Tyne — the port of Newcastle. 

Newcastle was a Roman station, and through it passed the 
great Roman wall of Adrian, crossing the island to Carlisle. 

Alnwick Castle — so beautifully celebrated by Halleck — is 
reached by a short stage from Newcastle. The home of the 
Percys — Dukes of Northumberland — all things considered, 
it is one of the most striking of the many old castles which 
unite the palace, the castle, the fortress, and the fortification 
in one great pile of strength — almost impregnable a few cen- 
turies ago. It was allowed to go to decay after several 
military misfortunes, but it has been fully and finely re- 
stored, and is said to be hardly surpassed by any of the 
old lordly castles of England. The original castle is said to 
have been the work of the Romans. On the gentle hill — 

"Lovely in England's fadeless green," 



ALNWICK CASTLE. 515 

described by the poet, in the midst of the grounds of the 
estate — are the five acres enclosed by the walls of the 
castle court. We crossed the drawbridge and entered the 
enclosure beneath the portcullis and the castle was before us. 
The outer wall, massive and turreted, on an irregular 
line, encloses the grand court, and on the outside is a moat. 
It has lofty towers at the angles and gateways, and its 
majestic battlements have the air of great strength, while 
the grand castle itself, in the middle of the court, rears its 
lofty battlements and dizzy towers — some of which seem 
almost to reach the sky. There are sixteen towers, sur- 
mounted by statues of the various classes of armed defend- 
ers, who frown in stone on high — these are spearmen, and 
slingers, and arquebusiers, and musketeers, and swords- 
men, and stone-throwers, and archers, and bowmen — without 
number, about the battlements and towers — each in the 
arms and attitude of his peculiar attack. Nothing could be 
more suggestive of the lordly independence of the old feudal 
state. In the armory we had a nearer view of these 
weapons, offensive and defensive. There were pistols, 
swords, guns, and spears enough for a little army, and cross- 
bows, helmets, headplates, &c, to show the ancient arms. 
A little swivel wall-gun was worthy of notice — it had a rifle 
bore about one and a quarter inch, and was mounted on a 
small carriage— all so light that it might be easily shifted 
from place to place on the walls, wherever the enemy should 
make his appearance-^-a miniature flying artillery. In the 
little museum were Roman, and Saxon, and Celtic remains 
of arms, and arrow-heads, and stone axes like those found in 
our country. A battle hatchet or small axe weighing, per- 
haps, a pound, with a short handle of twelve to fourteen 
inches long, also called to mind the Indian tomahawk. The 
courts of the castle are all matted with turf — that velvet so 
common in English ornamental grounds and so perfectly 
beautiful. 



516 ALNWICK CASTLE. 

The grounds of the estate are of immense extent and 
great beauty— an undulating and rolling landscape, diversified 
by lawns, and dells, and clumps, and groves, alive with 
flocks, and herds, and tenantry. A monument to the 
Duke's liberality is called the Farmers' Folly — His Grace 
very generously reduced the rents on his estate, and the 
farmers memorized it by erecting a column, surmounted by 
the lion of the Percys — He disliked it, and told them they 
might have better saved their money, and threatened to get 
out his guns and batter it down — He thought better of it, 
with reason, and allows it to stand as a monument of their 
thanks if not of his generosity. 

On the walls of the beautiful little chapel was the 
family pedigree from Charlemagne to the last earl. The 
library, not large, contained many of the most expensive 
illustrated works, and portraits by Kneller and Lely, said to 
be very excellent specimens of those masters in portraiture. 

The furniture of the various rooms was characterized by 
the unpretentious and tasteful richness which so well becomes 
the old nobility, without the slightest approach to parvenu 
luxury and show. A plain boudoir — the saloon furnished 
with simple embroidered furniture — the drawing-rooms with 
gilt and scarlet satin, embroidered with yellow — dining and 
breakfast rooms, with oak and maroon, in harmony with 
the substantial and grave old freestone castle. The grand 
bowl or ewer, prepared at an expense of thirty pounds sterling, 
for George IV. to wash his sacred (!) head in, on an ex- 
pected visit to the Duke, failed of that honor. Before 
reaching Alnwick the suicide of Castlereagh called his 
Majesty back to London. 

In the midst of such a scene, are we not taught to wait 
with more patience for the passing away of " every day's 
report of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled V 
These towers and battlements, now simply ornamental, and 



BERWICK UPON TWEED. 517 

these armed stone warriors on the walls, in their habit as 
they lived, now nothing but ancient curiosities, here in the 
midst of so peaceful a scene, remind us of the private warfare 
of our ancestors — of Chevy Chase so fatal to the proudest 
border chivalry — of the daily street fights of knights and 
gentlemen who, on the slightest provocation, whipped their 
rapiers out and murdered their associates — of the prize-fights 
— often so fatal — of the tournament and the lists where 
beautiful and noble ladies partook of the spirit of the fight, 
smiled on the victors and bestowed with pride the rewards 
of the bloody strife. All gone ! Greater changes are to 
follow, and are now begun. 

The old border town, Berwick upon Tweed — in old times 
a sort of little independent principality — has a thousand 
memories of the bloody days of border warfare and brutality. 

The town itself has nothing worth stopping an hour to 
look at, but from its half-obliterated and grass-grown forti- 
fications the view out upon the German ocean, with the 
sweep of the land, is exceedingly broad and fine. The 
railway viaduct, finished four years ago and opened by the 
Queen herself, is a marvellous work of its kind — twenty-one 
hundred feet long and one hundred and twenty-five feet above 
the river, on twenty-eight stone arches, sixty-one and a 
half feet span, and supported on piers eight feet thick — it is 
a magnificent termination of a solid embankment of about 
a mile long, and in some places sixty feet high. As the 
heavy English trains thunder over these lofty arches, the 
effect is sublime. 



Cfcapttr %§ntt*th 



SCOTLAND. 

WE made our first stop in Scotland at Melrose, in the 
afternoon, and immediately drove to Abbotsford. 
The keeper was absent — his wife, from her little cottage, 
said we were too late, and could not be admitted — a small 
douceur, however, opened the gate, and through the court, 
set around with ancient relics, Roman as well as Scottish, 
we were shown into the study, the library, the dining- 
room, the armory, etc. Abbotsford is like its author and 
his various literary productions. He was the first who, with 
great success, out of the odds and ends of unremembered 
history, and unrecorded tradition, created a series of historic 
tales and characters, and by the wonderful force of his 
genius, elevated the sorrows, the sufferings, the sympathies, 
the joys, and the hopes of humbler life, to the highest level 
of romantic interest. It was not humble readers alone that 
swelled his admirers to millions all over the world. It was 
those of the highest cultivation and those of the proudest 
nobility, in church and state, that seized with the most 



ABBOTSFORD. 519 

avidity the first editions of his thick-coming volumes. It 
was not tales of their peers that so wrought upon the 
highest classes of the most artificial, aristocratic and ex- 
clusive circles in the world, but it was almost always the 
romance of humble life that gave to the tale its most ab- 
sorbing interest. Everything, everywhere, was character- 
istic of the man. — his noble library of twenty thousand 
volumes, and the little study, with its narrow stairs and 
gallery, by which he reached his bed-room — the quiet and 
beautiful look-out upon the river, and the grounds from the 
dining-room — his little armory, with its " routh of auld 
nick nackets" — Rob Roy's gun, purse, and all sorts of 
arms and antiquities — the family portraits, and those of 
their friends, and other pictures on the walls of the drawing- 
room, dining-room and library — a caricature of Queen 
Elizabeth dancing was capital — another, the head of Mary 
Queen of Scots, in a charger, the day after her execution ! 
What romance and history of cruelty and blood are sug- 
gested by those two pictures ! 

Curious relics not only lie upon the shelves, and stand in 
the corners and recesses, but are incorporated into the walls 
of the building witbin, as well as without. "The entire 
composition of the edifice is made up of quaint and curious 
fragments of the antique, with modern imitations woven 
into an indescribably picturesque assemblage of masonry. 
The fantastic groups of its chimneys, gablets, projecting 
windows, turrets, and balconies, are combined in the true 
revelry of Gothic exuberance, which it would be impossible 
to reduce to order, method, or consecutiveness. The general 
effect is at once pleasing and surprising. Almost every 
celebrated antiquarian building throughout the country has 
contributed something to Abbotsford — even the palaces of 
Holyrood, Dunfermline, and Linlithgow, and the churches of 
Melrose and Roslin^ which might be supposed exempt from 



520 MELROSE ABBEY. 

all kinds of spoliation." Many of these ancient stones set 
in the walls have still visible on them the quaint old inscrip- 
tions in which some moral or religious truth — a passage of 
scripture or a stanza of verses is sculptured in the type and 
dialect of the time. Perhaps these are all genuine antiques, 
and perhaps some of them are the production of the same 
mind that produced the beautiful mottoes of many of his 
chapters, and credited them to " Old Play." The volume of 
those old plays is not found in his library. 

Many times as Melrose Abbey — the most beautiful of 
monastic ruins — has been described in prose and verse, it is 
still left to every new visiter, I believe, to say that he had 
no adequate idea of the delicate beauty of its architecture 
and ornaments even now — desolate and shattered as it has 
been left by the fury of fanatical zeal, and by the impartial 
but remorseless destruction of Time. 

I went all through it — above and below — while the west- 
ern declining sun revealed all the beauties in their highest 
literal perfection. I remained till the northern twilight 
softened and beautified everything, by throwing its even and 
mellow light over the whole, without the shadows of the 
sun or the moon — and remembering Scott's lines in the Lay 
so often quoted — 

" Wouldet thou view fair Melrose aright, 
Go visit it by the pale moonlight ;" 

after the rest and refreshment of our tea. in an evening 
without a cloud, and while the moon was shining, silver 
bright, I went out to take another look — and rising early in 
the morning, I went again to see the effect of the risinw 
sun, throwing his horizontal rays through that magnificent 
east window, down the length of the nave, as he did four 
hundred years ago, when the old Cistertians said their matin 
prayers beneath its tranquil arches. It seems to me that, 
fully to appreciate Melrose, it should be seen thus in various 



MELROSE ABBEY. 521 

lights. The details, which can be seen only by clear day- 
light, are the wonder of the abbey — without them it is not 
remarkable — and he that has not seen them carefully need 
not say that he has seen Melrose aright. Having seen them 
thus by daylight, their impression goes with him in spite of 
himself — and in the mellow twilight, 1 am not quite sure 
that the impression is not really heightened by the conceal- 
ment of some of the tooth-marks of time, that garish day 
thrusts into sight. So, too, when the pale moonlight view 
supervenes, upon a careful look, the novelty of the effect 
adds to its interest, perhaps to its beauty — so strong are the 
contrasts between the lights, so silvery, and the shadows, so 
black, 

" When the broken arches are black in night, 
And each shafted oriel glimmers white, 
Where the cold light's uncertain shower 
Streams on the central ruined tower ; 
When buttress and buttress, alternately, 
Seem framed of ebon and ivory." 

But much of this very beauty — most of it — really depends 
upon the previous knowledge that none of it is black, or 
white, or ebon, or ivory, or silver, but the same beautifully 
cut brown stone. And the charm of the sunrise view de- 
pended, doubtless, upon some accidental or extrinsic circum- 
stances as well as upon the sun — which, certainly in its 
contrasts of light, gave a new and magical effect to the 
details of the chancel and nave — hundreds of swallows 
darted in and out of their nests in the groined arches and dim 
recesses, and chirped, and twittered, and sang their jo}- in 
the morning ray — solemn jackdaws — what personifications of 
perfunctory solemnity, and monotonous platitudes — sat 
on the walls, and slowly and gravely stepped along the 
crumbling arches, and almost seemed to yawn like lazy 
monks waked early from last night's late cheer on the beef 
and ale of their neighbors, while flocks of rooks and crows 



522 MELROSE ABBEY. 

— -just starting out on their morning flights — helped to 
diversify the scene. 

There is a nave with side aisles — north and south tran- 
septs — and the chancel. The recessed windows and doors 
and the groined arches of the stone ceiling are cut in stone, 
and seem to retain the sharpness and perfection which they 
had when first cut. Hundreds of rosettes, and flowers, 
and plants, and figures, are scattered over the arches, the 
niches, the mullions, and the tracery, yet — like the beautiful 
variety of nature — no two are of the same pattern, though 
all have a generic likeness which gives the grace of har- 
mony to the whole. You get close to the beautiful tracery 
— out of reach, and out of sight, and out of use — and you 
are more and more surprised at the perfection of the work. 
The beautiful figure of Scott — that magic had twined the 
slender osier twigs in freakish knots about the poplar shafts 
and then changed the whole to stone — is hardly a figure — 
The plants, and flowers, lilies, ferns, grapes, house-leaks, 
oak leaves with acorns, palms, holly, fir cones, scallops, 
&c, on the mouldings, and capitals, and friezes, are chisel- 
led with such artistic skill that you may thrust a straw, through 
and through, beneath the twigs, and among the leaves, and 
behind the stalks — some of them fresh and sharp as they 
were when, four hundred years ago, they came from the 
sculptor's hand. The great east window, thirty-seven feet 
high, and sixteen feet Avide — its stone mullions straight from 
top to bottom, and, in the upper part, interwoven with the 
most graceful ornament — is only the most beautiful and 
magnificent of the many windows that pierce all the walls. 
There are sixty-eight niches for statues, most of which — and 
why not all, 1 cannot say — were destroyed — a few are left 
— there is a Paul, and a Peter, and a Virgin and Child. 
The caryatides and corbeils, with their inscriptions, remain. 
Within the Abbey these are graceful and becoming the 



MELROSE ABBEY. 523 

sacredness of the place, but without, it is far otherwise. 
The gargoyles of the corners of the roofs and towers, are gro- 
tesques of the drollest conceit, which cannot be described, 
except by drawings, and the nature or characteristic of 
them has been variously conjectured. Some have supposed 
them fiends or evil spirits, exorcised by the holy spirit 
within — to my hurried look they seemed a satire of the 
music of the outer world, with which the Abbey was sur- 
rounded. All were quaint and humorous, and some biting and 
severe. I took the clue from one on the south roof — a sow 
playing the bagpipes as an harmonious accompaniment to her 
own squealing — which, I thought, pointed directly at the 
national instrument of Scotland — another, I should suppose, 
intended to represent, in burlesque, a psalm-singing follower 
of John Knox, if the statues are of so late a period. The 
Cistertians had their head in France and, doubtless, French 
taste as well as French wit, had a hand in cutting these gro- 
tesques, as well as in the plan and finish of the building. It 
is finished in every corner, in the highest point as well as 
below, front as well as rear, in the same masterly manner — 
which is said to be usually true of the religious edifices 
of the Catholic Church. The temple is a place for God to 
dwell in, and to His all-seeing eye every part is equally 
visible — it is an offering to God and should be without 
blemish. 

The walls are so thick as to allow a narroAV passage, about 
eighteen inches wide, within them — in which, by narrow 
steps, one might pass above and below, invisibly, and com- 
mand a view of the whole interior, through windows for 
the purpose. It is said that the monks of Melrose needed 
watching, and that their fastings and mortifications were 
sometimes more theoretical than practical — that they did 
not always observe the ancient rules of their order, which 
required them to assemble for their devotions at two o'clock 



524 MELROSE ABBEY. 

in the morning, and at six, and at nine, and at twelve, and 
at three, and at six, and again before the hour of resting, 
which was at eight in the evening. They were not allowed 
to walk abroad alone, but in pairs, to watch each other, and 
to suggest pious reflections. Neither did they always confine 
themselves to soupe maigre even on Fridays — they were 
exceedingly sociable and neighborly with those who had well- 
supplied cellars and larders. The old lines are familiar — 

" The monks of Melrose made fat kail 
On Fridays, when they fasted — 
And never wanted beef and ale 
So long as their neighbors' lasted." 

To our eyes it seems strange that such temples should be 
reared, at such a vast outlay of wealth and skill, for the mere 
routine worship, of men useless to themselves and useless to 
God and his works — companies of idlers who lived in 
cloisters, and who wrought at no useful labors — who 
neither taught nor pi-eached for the benefit of others — and 
we do not wonder that, in some Roman Catholic countries, 
sometimes their property has been confiscated and their 
establishments broken up as inconsistent with the public 
good. The number of religious houses that existed in 
England and Scotland are a sufficient evidence of the abuses 
to which they are liable and of their tendency to encourage 
poverty and idleness. 

Edinburgh — the modern Athens of the North — was a 
most agreeable surprise to us. We had heard of the old 
town, and the new, and something of the characteristics of 
each, and of the beauty of the whole, but we were wholly 
unprepared for the sights which it offered us — familiar 
and truthful prints notwithstanding. We did not look for 
such exceeding beauty in every respect. It is quite without 
a parallel — in its variety of situation, high and low, on both 
sides of a ravine, with hillsides, and crags, and cliffs, and 



EDINBURGH. 525 

precipices, in their original state, in the heart of the city, 
and also rising wild and rude in the near environs — in its 
ancient, narrow, and precipitous streets, and its lofty many- 
storied ancient, and antique, and vulgar looking houses, and 
filthy alleys, courts, and closes of the old town. And on the 
other hand, in the new town, I do not remember where are 
excelled its wide, clean, and well-paved streets — one 
hundred to one hundred and fifty feet wide — with palatial 
mansions, street after street, and mile after mile — its squares, 
and crescents, and circles — its monuments, and public 
buildings — its ruins and antiquities — its associations, 
historical, religious, and romantic, political and literary, 
and its public institutions. I am happy that I have seen it, 
and that I have seen it after wandering many a thousand 
miles over the best portions of adult Christendom. I would 
that this great capital of letters, and of political and reli- 
gious reformation may always maintain, in my recollection, 
the high place which it deserves in the memory of all who 
honor the land and the city of Knox, and Chalmers, and 
Mackenzie, and Scott, and Burns, and Stewart, and Playfair, 
and of the Edinburgh Review. The first and most striking 
object that meets the eye is that gray, lofty, and rugged 
castle on a rocky cliff — the Acropolis — which has justly 
given this city the name of the modern Athens — a name 
which it has, doubtless, retained with more ease because in 
genius, and wit, and social glee, in high intellectual cultiva- 
tion, and in literary production, in constellations of genius, 
it is quite as Athenian as in its physical conformation. 

In education — in the universal spread of rudimental educa- 
tion and the great diffusion of high intellectual culture — is to 
be found the foundation of the real glory of Scotland — and it 
is in Edinburgh that all these exist in their greatest perfection, 
and hence their light is spread abroad through this ancient 
and remarkable nation. Here public educational institutions, 



526 EDUCATIONAL HOSPITALS. 

established by private munificence, are called hospitals, 
as though the ignorance and helplessness of poverty were a 
disease. Such institutions are among the most interesting 
and striking lions of the Scottish capital — Gillespie's Hos- 
pital, the Merchant Maiden Hospital, George Heriot's 
Hospital, Donaldson's Hospital, the Orphan Hospital, John 
Watson's Hospital, Stewart's Hospital, are now in succes- 
ful operation — and they are got up in a style of magnifi- 
cence which shows what it is that Scotland delights to 
honor. " Edinburgh," says- one of the local guide-books, 
" is overrun with these educational charities, so much so that 
of several large bequests not yet brought into operation, it 
were well could some more urgent necessity be benefited by 
their application.'' Is there any other place in the world 
where private munificence has given, for educational pur- 
poses, such princely sums that Charity builds her houses 
with royal grandeur and magnificence, and still is really- 
overstocked and plethoric with money 1 

Heriot's is the oldest hospital, and was established by a 
bequest of George Heriot in 1624, given for the "Mainten- 
ance, relief, and up-bringing of so many poor and fatherless 
boys, — freemen's sons of the town of Edinburgh — as the 
same shall be sufficient for." A sticking and beautiful edi- 
fice one hundred and sixty-two feet square is the central 
institution, where one hundred and eighty boys — between 
seven and fourteen years of age — are instructed in the 
elements of a thorough English education, and in drawing, 
French, Latin and Greek. A surplus income of about 
fifty thousand dollars supports " Heriot schools" in different 
parts of the city — in which three thousand boys are taught. 
Donaldson's Hospital, one of the more recent, was establish- 
ed by the bequest, in 1830, of one million of dollars — of 
James Donaldson, proprietor of the Edinburgh Advertiser, 
for the education of three hundred poor boys and girls. It 



clasgow. 527 

is one of the most showy and graceful buildings in Europe — 
two hundred and seventy feet square — its lofty towers, and 
battlements, its beautiful enrichments and decorations, are in 
the finest style of palatial splendor — its grounds are in keeping 
with the building. It has rooms for one hundred and fifty boys 
and the same number of girls. A portion of its beneficiaries, 
of each sex, are deaf mutes. Children of the name of 
Donaldson or Marshal have a preference. They are edu- 
cated till fourteen years of age, when they are dismissed 
with a sum of money to aid them in getting apprenticed or 
otherwise set agoing. What noble monuments these men 
have reared to their own memories— how their works live 
after them — how being dead they yet speak and teach, and 
through the long ages of immortality, in the persons of 
their beneficiaries, will go about doing good ! How few of 
the wealthy are willing thus to lay up their treasures in 
heaven. 

I have noted, in my tablets as well as in my memory, 
many of the striking objects, and details, and associations — 
ancient as well as modern — which crowd upon one, here, and 
are of such singular interest, but I do not find time to write 
of them as I would. 

Enterprising, industrious, thrifty Glasgow gave us the 
repose of the Sabbath. It is the first place in Europe where 
we have found what may properly be called an American 
Sabbath — for nowhere else, I believe, is the Christian Sab- 
bath observed as it is in the United States. We attended 
church in the venerable old Cathedral — the finest Gothic 
Cathedral in Scotland, I believe — nearly seven hundred 
years old. Only a portion of the interior is used as a 
place of worship — it is Presbyterian. Most of the nave 
and the side aisles are unoccupied. These immense churches 
are quite unfit for the Protestant service — they are appro- 
priate only to the Catholic worship, for which they were 



528 THE LAND OF BURNS. 

erected, whose pealing harmonies, and visible, ritualistic 
ceremonies, are adapted to immense temples and vast religious 
assemblies. 

Near the Cathedral is the Necropolis of Glasgow — their 
exceedingly striking and conspicuous cemetery — covering tire 
top and sides of a hill. The crowning and characteristic 
monument — which seems to give its air to the whole, and, as 
it were, to finish it — is the monument to John Knox. This 
and other lofty monuments are relieved against the sky with 
a wonderfully fine effect. 

The city is on both sides of the Clyde, which is spanned 
by fine bridges. Its new streets, of lofty stone houses, are 
exceedingly beautiful — its public squares, and statues, and 
monuments — there are statues of Sir John Moore, of Watt, 
of Wellington, of Walter Scott, and others — add much to 
the beauty of the town, while the lofty chimneys of some of 
its manufactories — one of them is the highest building in 
Europe — give to the whole city a sort of towering appear- 
ance. 

From Glasgow to the li Land of Burns" was to complete 
our excursion through Scotland, and thence I determined to 
cross the Irish Channel by steamer from Androssan to 
Belfast, and to take a glimpse of Ireland. 

The " Land of Burns." Who else has a Land ? I do not 
remember, in the great circle of literary celebrities, another 
whose name has been given — naturally, inevitably, almost 
instinctively — to all the region which he inhabited in his 
life. Pope had his villa at Twickenham, and Horace Wal- 
pole had his Strawberry Hill, and Walter Scott his Abbots- 
ford, and others have builded, and ornamented, and immor- 
talized homes for the ripeness of their fame in their declin- 
ing years, and the homes and birthplaces of many others 
have, by an admiring posterity, been sought out and set 
apart as sacred and monumental. Burns could not have 



THE LAND OF BURNS. 529 

builded a cottnge for those he loved — he lived and died in 
poverty — of careless and improvident habits — with a family 
and an income of sometimes two hundred dollars, never 
more than three hundred dollars a year, and this derived 
from a humiliating employment, to which nothing but the 
wants of his wife and children could compel him to submit 
— a gauger in the excise — 

" Searching auld wives' barrels, 
Och ho the day ! 

That clarty barm should stain my laurels, 
But — what'll ye say! 

These muvin' things ca'd wives and weans 
Wad muve the very hearts o' stanes !" 

Yet there is hardly a stream, or a hill, or a scene of that 
peninsula, which lies between the Solway and the Clyde — 
that is not lustrous Avith his glory, though he died in early 
manhood — and from Carrick shore to the Nith, from Ayr 
and Kilmarnock to Dumfries, the banks, and braes, and 
streams around that region — in which he was only a cotter, a 
ploughman, a flaxdresser, a gauger — all have centred into one 
name — not the scene of " Tam O'Shanter," nor that of the 
u Cotter's Saturday Night," not Doon, nor Ayr, nor Alloway, 
nor Lugar, nor Afton, but the " Land of Burns," is immortal- 
ized by his genius as it is crested with his name. It will 
soon be a hundred years since he was born in that humblest 
of Scotch peasant cottages, and every day since he died, his 
name and his fame have grown greener and fresher, and his 
prospect for immortality is not surpassed by any that have 
written English poetry. There are no songs that will out- 
live his — there is not in the language a heroic appeal that 
approaches to " Bruce' s Address," — I do not know in any 
language a poem that can be at all compared to the " Cot- 
ter's Saturday Night" in the characteristic excellence of that 
great poem — and "Tam O'Shanter" stands entirely alone in 

23 



530 THE LAND OF BURNS- 

its characteristic genius. Go over the whole ground of the 
midnight trip of Tam, as I did, and see what are the 
materials of which genius makes its wonderful creations! 
I have often thought that his songs for Mr. Thompson were 
one of the greatest triumphs of his genius. In shattered 
health, in careless habits, in his repulsive and vulgar daily 
occupation of a gauger, to have written two hundred such 
songs to order, in about two years — say two a week — is a 
marvellous command of the poetic afflatus. 

My admiration of his poems has been wonderfully intensi- 
fied by this brief visit to the " Land of Burns." From his 
birth — in that little cottage in which he first saw the light — 
to his sorrowful, early, death at Dumfries, all the scenes of 
his life and of his poems seemed to come up to me as fresh 
as though I had known him on the spot. In that cottage, 
with its little window of four small panes and homely 
appointments, it required no effort to call up the touching 
scenes of the " Colter's Saturday night." The ' ' New Brig " 
and the " Auld Brig" still span the Ayr, some three hundred 
feet apart. We t<ook the road over which " Tam, frae Ayr, 
did canter," about two miles — past the ford where the pedlar 
was lost in the snow — and the stone over which the drunk- 
ard broke his neck — and the stone-heap where the hunters 
found the murdered child — and the thorn-tree where the old 
woman hanged herself — and the old church ruin and grave- 
yai'd — all a pure creation of the poet, except the old kirk Allo- 
way. Read over again the poem, or repeat it as I did as I 
went along, from Tarn's starting out, to his view of the 
witches' table, and agree with me that as such a creation it 
has nothing like it. This new life which is given to all his 
poems, has opened up for me a new store of pleasure, which 
can never be exhausted and will never pall. 

That Burns had degrading habits need not be concealed 
— he was, indeed, a sinner. Those who are without sin 



THE LAND OF BURNS. 531 

may stone him if they please — not I. His early life, and the 
circumstances which surrounded him — the society into 
which he was thrown, and the terms on which he was 
made the associate of those above his sphere in life — being 
the idol of rural Scotland, and the admired and courted of 
the aristocratic and cultivated society of the Scotch capital, 
might well have injured the morals of a better balanced 
mind and less impulsive nature than the wonderful young 
ploughman. How often he wept over his vices ! — How 
he confessed, and repented, and grieved over his ina- 
bility to conquer them, and prayed for forgiveness ! Have 
we all done it as sincerely and earnestly as he did in these 
lines % 

" O, Thou unknown, Almighty Cause 
Of all my hope and fear ! 
In whose dread presence, ere an hour, 
Perhaps I must appear ! 

" If I have wandered in those paths 
Of life I ought to shun ; 
As something, loudly, in my breast, 
Remonstrates I have done — 

*' Where human weakness has come short, 
Or frailty stept aside, 
Do Thou, All-Good ! for such Thou art, 
In shades of darkness hide. 

" Where with intention I have erred 
No other plea I have, 
But Thou art good — and goodness still 
Delighteth to forgive." 

As I stood by that beautiful monument to his memory — 
so beautiful in itself, and in its surroundings, and in its 
touching original memorials there preserved — the Bible 
given by him to Highland Mary — their recorded vows sealed 
with appropriate passages of Scripture— I seemed to hear 
coming up through the marble arches his own epitaphian 
confession and self-judgment — 



532 THE LAND OF BURNS. 



' Is there a whim-inspired fool, 
OwTe fast for thought, owre hot for rule, 
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, 
Let him draw near ; 
And owre this grassy heap 8ing dool, 
And drap a tear. 

1 Is there a bard of rustic song, 
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, 
That weekly this area throng, 

O, pass not by ! 
But, with a frater-feeling strong, 

Here heave a sigh. 

'■ Is there a man, whose judgment clear, 
Can others teach the course to steer, 
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career, 

Wild as the wave ; 
Here pause — and, through the starting tear, 

Survey this grave. 

■ This poor inhabitant below 

Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
And keenly felt the friendly glow, 

And softer flame, 
But thoughtless follies laid him low, 

And stained his name. 

■ Beader attend — whether thy soul 
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole, 

In low pursuit ; 
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control 

Is wisdom's root." 



In these two little poems is the character of Burns drawn 
by himself in fewer and truer words than it has been done 
by any other hand. 

A call on Mrs. Begg, the sister of the poet, who received 
us with much apparent pleasure, and spoke with undisguised 
satisfaction of his fame in our country, seemed to make our 
visit to the land of Burns almost like a visit to the poet 
himself. 



Cjjaptu ©jjirtg-fini 



IRELAND. 



WE took possession of our room in the steamer for 
Ireland, at Androssan, weary with the sight-seeing 
of the day, yet soothed by its tranquil memories, and soon 
fell asleep, and did not awake till the early dawn of that 
high latitude, when we arose and went on deck just as we 
were entering the arm of the sea known as the Belfast 
Lough — between whose low and unattractive shores passing 
— on the right — the towers of Carrickfergus, waving in ivy 
green from donjon keep to turret wall, and on the left, the 
ruins of Bangor Castle — we made our way to Belfast. 

Scenes of cruelty and oppression are first suggested 
wherever you approach this beautiful and devoted island. 
A thousand years ago the Danes massacred nine hundred 
monks, with their abbot, at the monastery of Bangor. At 
Carrickfergus, William III. landed before the bloody battle 
of the Boyne — and it was the garrison of Carrickfergus that 
committed the cowardly massacre of the Catholics on Island 
Magee, butchering some, and driving othe:*s off the moun- 
tain cliffs of basalt into the sea. 



534 IRELAND — BELFAST. 

Belfast is a thrifty, manufacturing, and commercial little 
citj,of more than onehundred thousand people— with nothing 
to distinguish its regular streets, and red brick houses and 
factories, from those of the Lowells and Pawtuckets of. 
the United States. Its greatest manufacture is linen — and 
Ave went through the greatest linen mill there — Monhol- 
land's — employing fourteen hundred hands. We saw the 
little army let out to breakfast — not an army, for there was 
no regularity, no order, nor neatness — Lowell and Law- 
rence would put them to shame. They were barefooted, 
ragged and dirty — a throng, a rabble of small and great, 
old men and maidens, young men and little children, run- 
ning together in disorder. 

The introduction of machinery into the linen manufac- 
ture has done much for it within a few years past, and will 
doubtless do still more, but I do not believe that it can ever 
come in injurious competition with cotton. I have taken 
no pains to look up the statistics on the subject, but I sup- 
pose that the preponderance in favor of cotton is greater 
and greater every day, and must so continue. Within seven 
years last past, the crop has about trebled, in consequence 
of extraordinary efforts, and now gives employment to 
about sixty thousand persons — producing about thirteen 
millions of dollars. The increase of this branch of industry 
is regenerating the province of Ulster, and infusing new 
vigor into Ireland. Neither have I any belief that the 
cotton of India and Africa, united, will ever seriously com- 
pete with the cotton of the United States. Those Oriental 
crops will increase, but while they are multiplying by thou- 
sands, ours will be multiplying by ten thousands. The 
time is yet to come when the cotton fields will sweep all 
round the gulf of Mexico, and their millions of bales will 
furnish the raw material for the whole world. 

An excursion north, to Lough Neagh and Ballymena,and 



IRELAND — FACE OP THE COUNTRY. 535 

thence by Portadown, Dundalk, and Drogheda, down to 
Dublin, furnished my brief and rapid observation of Ire- 
land. This I suppose to be quite the most cultivated, civ- 
ilized, and human part of the island. The beauty of the 
scenery — the rich emerald green of its fields — the luxu 
riance of its vegetation — the hill and valley — the clump, 
and grove, and wood, the here and there country seats, and 
the less frequent castles, and the old towers — old as Brian 
Boroihme — never wearied the eye, so various and charming 
was their beauty. The meadows, just mown of their latest 
crop, presented an appearance of strange and almost dis- 
agreeable prettiness, for the hay was gathered into little, 
almost tiny, hay-cocks, two or three feet apart, each one care- 
fully tucked in at the bottom all around, with as much 
precision and regularity as if done by the fingers of skill 
and grace for purposes of ornament. 

The strong contrast which constantly met the eye, was the 
small stone huts of the peasants near the roadside, and in 
the fields — always dirty in front — filthy dung-heaps and the 
softest of mud constituting the near foreground of the 
house, which seemed to be held in common by the paddy, 
the pig, and the cow, and the chickens. In the villages the 
houses are small, and the streets crooked and narrow, with 
very little appeai*ance of thrift or taste, and in the towns 
whole streets of low huts, of thatch and mud, low brown 
and filthy — the whole street looking all the worse from the 
contrast shown by one hut which is whitewashed and neat. 
The fields are small, and shut in by stone walls. The huts 
or houses themselves, not more than seven feet high to the 
eaves, almost no windows — what an absurdity is a win- 
dow tax! Each side of the low door you may see, 
sometimes one, and sometimes two of " the finest pisantry 
in the world," by the door, apparently propping up the door- 
posts, and in the door the hog, evidently in no danger of 



536 DUNDALK DROGHEDA. 

being disturbed, as it were, picking his teeth after the meal 
which he has enjoyed within. I saw, however, no such 
evidence of want, beggary, and misery, as I had expected 
to find. I did not see but all were contented and happy, in 
homes which were quite suited to their taste. 

At Dundalk, Edward Bruce was crowned more than five 
hundred years ago, and during his short reign of two years, 
he held his court here — the last resident King of Ireland — 
and here he ended his career in that desperate battle, where 
priestly benedictions and promises — passed from rank to 
rank — kindled the zeal and aroused the couracre of armies 
whom hereditary hatred had already made furious. The 
personal encounter in which Bruce lost his life, was but a 
specimen of the spirit of that fight. Maupus, a knight, 
rushed into the ranks of the enemy, where he saw the king 
in the midst of his friends, and, with desperate self devo- 
tion, slew him, and fell upon his body, himself pierced by 
twenty deaths. 

Five and twenty miles further down the coast is Drogh- 
eda, an old town, of some fifteen thousand people, situated 
on both sides of the Boyne, and celebrated alike by 
the siege of Drogheda, by Cromwell, in 1649, and the 
battle of the Boyne, between the Prince of Orange and 
James II., his father-in-law, fought on the 1st July, 1690, 
in which James was fatally and finally overthrown, and 
William and Mary established on the throne of England. 
As this was really a contest between the Catholic and Prot- 
estant parties for the throne of England, and the Orange- 
men prevailed, it is not to be wondered at that our Celtic 
Catholic brethren are on that anniversary more thinskinned 
and pugnacious than on any other day in the calendar, nor 
that the Battle of the Boyne has caused so many broken 
heads, in America as well as in Ireland. 

James, with his kingdom, and perhaps his life at stake, 



DROGHEDA. 537 

was not able to exhibit any of that kingly bravery which 
would have increased the devotion of his followers, and have 
won the admiration of his enemies. "With the character- 
istic cowardice of his family, he fled in panic haste, before 
the fate of the day was decided. In his flight he reached 
Dublin on the day of the battle, and the next day he reached 
Waterford, a hundred miles farther, and there he embarked 
for France. When he came to Dublin Castle, on meeting 
Lady Tyrconnell, whose husband was with him at the 
Boyne, James is reported to have said, " Your country- 
men, the Irish, madam, can run very fast it must be owned." 
She, with a wit and boldness truly Irish, replied, "In 
this, as in all other things, your Majesty surpasses them, 
for you have won the race." On the monumental obelisk 
upon the battle ground, is an inscription of gratitude for the 
triumph of liberty, laws and religion, in this memorable vic- 
tory. 

In the earlier battle of Drogheda, the brave and chivalric 
governor, Sir Arthur Aston, with his garrison of less than 
three thousand men, gave Cromwell abundant means to know 
that they were brave and loyal — and Cromwell did not 
triumph till their obstinate bravery had so exasperated him, 
that the heroic in his character gave place to the brutal, and 
he stained his name by cruelties for which we cannot find 
any apology, even in that historical ferocity with which, for 
ages, the English had treated the Irish. If Solomon could 
say that oppression maketh the wise man mad, we might 
find in the oppressions of the English a sufficient cause for 
the conduct of the ignoi*ant and humble Celtic tribes, who, 
under English rule, were never permitted to enjoy liberty or 
law, or religion, till the wisdom and humanity of her present 
Majesty found, in a milder and more humane policy, the 
means of elevating the Irishman, improving his country, and 
securing his loyalty and affection. 
23* 



538 STATUES AND MONUMENTS. 

The beauty of the capital of Ireland was unexpected to 
me. Dublin may be considered as one of the most beau- 
tiful cities of the third class — those of more than a quar- 
ter of a million — its population is more than two hundred 
and sixty thousand. Being situated on both sides of the LifFey, 
vessels may come up quite into the city. It has many 
broad and beautiful streets, and many striking public build- 
ings, worthy of the rank of the city — its statues and monu- 
ments are worthy of the deeds and the men that they com- 
memorate, and the public squares are extraordinary for 
such a city. Mervin Square, and Fitzwilliam Square, and 
St. Stephen's Square, are of good size and beauty — few 
cities can boast of such a square as Phoenix Park, which 
contains seventeen hundred and fifty acres. 

The venerable Trinity College is housed in a noble pile of 
the Corinthian order — consisting of, or enclosing several 
spacious and lofty quadrangles, the inner fronts of which 
show grand pediments resting upon sunken Corinthian 
columns — the whole being as simple and plain as the 
Corinthian style will permit — and I do not remember to 
have seen any building which showed, in so striking a 
manner, how the beauty of that style becomes majestic 
when it is chastened down to its severest simplicity. The 
building is of cut Portland stone. It fronts on College 
Green, and dh'ectly opposite to it is the old Parliament 
House — the last home of the last Irish Parliament. Its 
walls listened to the debates on the dissolution of the union, 
and the formal and absolute absorption of the Irish sover- 
eignty. That, too, is a spacious, beautiful, and striking 
edifice, even in the presence of Trinity College. It is now 
the Bank of Ireland. You enter its noble chambers — the 
House of Lords and the House of Commons where are 
they ? You listen for the ringing tones and solemn caden- 
ces of Henry Grattan, but now as then they are drowned 



DUBLIN CASTLE. 539 

and overwhelmed by the click of gold. There were then a 
chosen few who would not bow down and worship the 
money god — now he holds undisputed sway. Was it not 
fit — providentially appropriate — that gold should take un- 
disputed possession of that Irish Parliament House ? 

In the street, as you pass from College Green — along 
Dame street, a street of great width — stands a statue of 
William III., the Prince of Orange. That it has been 
allowed to stand unharmed — through so many anniversaries 
of the battle of Boyne, in the heart of Paddydom — is cer- 
tainly creditable to the Roman Catholic population of the 
metropolis. He is clad in gold lace and epaulettes, and his 
dress, and housings, and trappings, are in colors. The effect 
is bad. It is one of the mysteries of art that nothing in 
sculpture is really effective but monochromatic bronze or 
stone. 

The Castle of Dublin, at the other end of Dame street, 
contains the palace of the Viceroy or Lord Lieutenant. The 
building it-self is rather a shapeless pile — made inore for 
strength than beauty, and aside from the viceregal apart- 
ments we saw little in it to arrest our steps, and even the 
family and state apartments of the palace fell below our 
expectation — the state-rooms, the ball-room, dining-room? 
— in plain crimson and gold — were not equal in finish and 
furniture, and appointments, to the houses of our more 
wealthy and tasteful citizens. 

The Viceregal Chapel, however, is quite a gem in its 
way. Its carvings in oak are exceedingly fine — especially 
the emblematic and suggestive carvings about the pulpit, 
were in capital artistic style, and of very expressive and 
appropriate significance, representing the sacred desk as 
springing from the Word of God — reposing upon the Gospels 
and the Holy Evangelists The choir was in the centre 
— the pews on the sides. The viceregal pew and that for 



540 PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN DUBLIN. 

the archbishop are in the gallery — one on each side of the 
church. As we passed out of the castle I asked a sentinel 
at the gate, -whether a large edifice adjacent to the castle 
were a part of it or what other building it was? — he an- 
swered " I can't tell you, indeed." It was. in fact, the" 
Citj Hall, or Royal Exchange — one of the most tasteful pub- 
lic buildings of Dublin — it has beautiful Corinthian facades 
on two sides, and a dome, and within it is furnished in ex- 
ceedingly noble and graceful style. The principal room is a 
large circular room, lighted from the dome, and its lofty 
roof supported by fluted Corinthian columns — and is wor- 
thily furnished with statues of Grattan by Chantry — of 
George Til. — of the Duke of Northumberland, in bronze — 
of Drummond, a popular secretary of the Irish government — 
and of Daniel O'Connel with the " Repeal" in his hand. 
The statues are all of them of considerable merit as works of 
art. The Custom-House, the General Post-Office, and the 
Four Courts — the court-house for the four courts, King's 
Bench, Common Pleas, Chancery, and Exchequer — are 
buildings of great architectural beauty, and worthily adorned 
with numerous monumental and allegorical sculptures. 
The Custom-House is said to be the finest in the British 
dominions. In the pediment of the central part is an alle- 
gorical group in honor of maritime commerce. On the 
attic storj behind are colossal statues of Navigation, 
TS'ealth, Commerce, and Industry — on another front the 
entablature is decorated with sculptures of Europe, Asia, 
Africa, and America. This dome rises to the height of 
one hundred and twenty feet and is surmounted by a colossal 
statue of Hope. The building cost two and a half millions 
of dollars — it is Doric. The Four Courts cost one million 
— it is Corinthian, and is enriched with many sculptures 
— historical, allegorical, and personal, connected more or 
less remotely with law and justice. These public buildings 



MONUMENTS OF NELSON AND WELLINGTON. 541 

are, in every sense, creditable to an enlightened and patriotic 
government. 

By the side of the Post-Office, is the Nelson monument— 
a Doric fluted column one hundred and twenty-one feet high, 
surmounted by a colossal statue of the hero — erected by 
subscription at a cost of more than thirty thousand dollars. 
The other great Irish hero, Wellington, has also a memorial 
obelisk, also raised by subscription and costing one hundred 
thousand dollars. It is inscribed with the names of his 
great battles — but, strangely enough — I do not know why — 
"Waterloo was not among them, although the monument was 
raised in 1817, while that crowning battle of his life was 
yet fresh in memory ! This memorial is just within the 
gates of Phoenix Square — the Hyde Park of Dublin — the 
grand resort of the fashion and quality of the Irish metropo- 
lis. This Park is seven miles round within the gates. 
Sackville street, the Broadway of Dublin, is a beautiful, 
showy, and busy street of shops. The streets are well built 
up of brick, but brown and dingy in color, and in portions 
of the city remind one of Philadelphia. The absence of 
cornices and window caps from most of the houses gives 
them an unfinished and plain aspect, of which the effect is 
bad — greatly impairing the beauty of the city. 



WALES. 

FROM Dublin a short railroad took us to Kingstown, 
where we took passage in one of the packet steamers 
to Holyhead instead of Liverpool, that we might take a 
brief look at Wales. The passage across the channel was 
almost too calm and too bright to be agreeable. No Ameri- 
can day could be more cloudless and fair — no water more 
glassy and peaceable. The sea and the sky were in striking 
contrast with the rugged face of Holyhead, whose rocky 
cliffs, seen from that approach, are as bold and bluff as rocks 
can be. From Holyhead over Anglesea, the road lies 
through wild and half desert scenery — long stretches of 
sand hills, and beach grass — and the rocks of the coast crop 
out in every direction, while little white cottages are scat- 
tered all over the scene — and on to Bangor and about its 
vicinity, pretty heather, and the coarse gorse, and broom, 
cover the wayside and the headlands between the fields — 
and the cottages of the peasants, enliven the wild and primi- 
tive landscape. Many of them are whitewashed to the top 
of the chimney, and all of them are exceedingly neat. The 



WALES — THE WELSH- 543 

costume of the Welsh peasantry and common people is 
awkward and strange. The old women wear large round 
men's hats. Our guide said, that in the old wars — which 
were so desperate and bloody, in defence of their wilderness 
mountains and rocky fastnesses — the women fought as did 
the men, and that they continue to wear their hats in mem- 
ory of their prowess and powers of self protection. They 
are a very good looking, healthy, and fair-cheeked people, 
with a national physiognomy quite clearly marked. The mar- 
ket women on large donkeys were grotesque and laughable. 
In Wales alone we have seen the venerable donkey with his 
ears cropped. It is cruel thus to impair his beauty and to 
vulgarize and degrade him — his asinine wisdom is gone, 
and his dignified and respectable having-his-own-way-for- 
his-own-reasons takes the look of a sullen and vicious 
obstinacy. 

The old people speak only Welsh, the young, however, 
speak also English and are taught in English schools — the 
same is true in Ireland and Scotland. The Welsh, and 
Scotch, and Irish, and the dialect of the provinces, can 
hardlv last fifty years more, and to our children's children 
the broad Scotch of Burns and Allan Ramsay, and the long 
lines of Welsh consonants, abhorring vowels as nature does a 
vacuum, and the Gaelic, will be dead languages, and 
throughout the British islands, then containing a population 
of fifty millions, all will speak the same language in the 
same homogeneous dialect with the hundred millions that 
will then have carried liberty, and light, and progress, from 
the Panama railroad to the Russian possessions, and from 
St. John's to Sitka. 

The Menai strait, between the island of Anglesea and the 
mainland, opens into the bay of Beaumaris and the Irish 
sea on the northeast, and into Caernarvon bay and St. 
George's channel on the southwest. On the bay of Beau- 



544 CASTLE OF CAERNARVON. 

maris is the village of Beaumaris, a watering place of con- 
siderable resort, and the noble old ruin — the castle of Caer- 
narvon — and the old Welsh village of Caernarvon— also a 
place to which are attracted many strangers — are at the 
mouth of the strait in the bay of Caernarvon. We did not ' 
go to Beaumaris, but from Bangor the eye takes in the 
beautiful bay and the village which terminate the view in 
that direction, while in the other direction, the seat and 
grounds of the Marquis of Anglesea, the bridges, and the 
monument to the Marquis of Anglesea's leg, diversify the 
scene. 

The suspension bridge over the strait has a very pictur- 
esque effect, and the railroad bridge — the tubular bridge of 
world-wide reputation — when we know the history of the 
labors, the difficulties, and the perils of the elevating this 
vast wrought iron tunnel, more than fifteen hundred feet 
long, and two hundred and ten feet above the water, and 
spanning such a torrent — adds much to the romantic interest 
of a scene whose natural features are strikingly beautiful. 

The old castle of Caernarvon is one of the grandest of 
Gothic castellated ruins, and is made doubly interesting by 
the associations which the terrible history of the subjugation 
of Wales have connected with it. 

The castle walls embrace near three acres of ground — 
they are a little less than eight feet thick. The Eagle Tower 
— said to have been originally surmounted by an eagle — is a 
lofty tower overtopping the whole castle. We reached the 
top by stairs within the holloAV walls. At first the stairs 
were wide and commodious — three feet wide, but they grad- 
ually diminished as they rose till at last they became con- 
tracted to fifteen inches width. The steps have only six 
inches width and six inches rise. In this tower is the little 
room, six feet by eight, in which Edward II. was born. 
That he might be a native of Wales, and thus be more accept- 



EAGLE TOWER DRUIDS. 545 

able to the people, his mother — then soon to be confined — 
came on horseback, in the depth of a dreadful Welsh winter, 
to this castle. Before Lis birth was known — indeed, before 
it was known that the queen had thus perilled her life to 
cheat the loyalty of the Welsh — the king assembled his Welsh 
barons, and announced to them that he would give them a 
prince who was a native Welshman, and could not speak or 
understand English, and whose character and habits were pure 
and irreproachable. In the wild enthusiasm of their joy their 
credulity was unbounded, and in the most devoted and sacred 
manner they swore allegiance to the prince thus announced 
to them. The king then informed them that this excellent 
prince was his little babe, just born in Caernarvon Castle — 
they then saw that he could speak no more Welsh than 
he could English, and was as free from good qualities as 
he was from bad. They had, however, taken an oath on 
their consciences and felt bound to maintain their loyalty to 
him. 

From the top of Eagle Tower the view is magnificent. The 
walls and towers of the castle — the surrounding waters — the 
town of Caernarvon — the bay and its shipping — the Menai 
strait with its high banks — the island of Anglesea — Snow- 
don and the neighboring mountains, and the intervening 
country — present a variety of beauty and contrasts of interest- 
ing objects, over which the eye passes with unsatisfying 
enjoyment, and the mind is lost in the memories and prophe- 
cies suggested by the graves upon graves — the generations of 
men and monuments — the powerful contrasts of nations, of 
religions, of governments and laws. The Druid, with his 
mysteries, his cyclopean circles and cairns, his solemn 
groves, his serpent-coiled processions, his altars dripping with 
human blood — was the genius of the place, and all around 
— from Beaumaris to the Dee — are his footprints and his 
relics older than recorded history. Here at hand are also the 



546 LLEWELLYN. 

almost obliterated ruins of Segontiura, a Roman city, and of 
a military road — and other Roman cities and stations are 
all along from Holyhead to Chester, and ancient coins and 
relics are, from time to time, turned out of the soil. Up 
these fearful precipices and across the rocky chasms the 
Roman soldiers — loaded down with their heavy armor — 
clambered to their triumphs over the ancient Cymri — To 
them suceeded the Britons, and to them again the English. 

Bloody battles by sea and land have many times stain- 
ed with blood the Menai strait and the fields of Wales, 
in which Norman, and Dane, and Saxon, and Roman, and 
Briton, and Englishman, have striven for the mastery of 
these even now sparsely settled and inhospitable regions. 
The " English Justinian," Edward I. — more than five hundred 
years ago — ended the strife by his triumph over Llewellyn, 
who fell by the spear of a common soldier, December 12th, 
1282, and in the savage joy of the English over his 
death they inhumanly put to the sword two thousand of his 
men. They cut off the head of the dead patriot and sent it 
to the English Justinian, who sent it to London — where, 
crowned with ivy, it was stuck upon the tower. The only 
brother of the prince — powerless and prostrate, an object of 
pity rather than fear — was, by order of the English Justin- 
ian, tried as a traitor at Shrewsbury and convicted — he 
had defended his country and his home under the command 
of his native sovereign, his only brother. His sentence, 
which was executed to the letter, was — " That he be drawn, 
while still alive, by a horse through the streets of Shrews- 
bury — be then beheaded — that his body be then quartered — 
his heart torn out and burned — his head sent and placed be- 
side his brother's on the tower of London, and the four 
quarters of his body distributed to Bristol, Northampton, 
York, and Winchester, that every part of England might 



CAERNARVON CONWAY RIIUDDLLAN. 547 

have a piece." A sentence whose principal significance is 
in its exhibition of the savagery of English warfare, and En- 
glish law, and English temper, and English taste in those 
early days. It was this same English Justinian that took 
the life of Wallace as a traitor — it was he, too, that hanged 
by martial law all the Welsh bards whom he captured. 
Their wild strains were seditious — one of those venerable 
men, as he swept his tremulous fingers over the chords of his 
harp was worth a thousand men to his rallying country- 
men. 

The three great castles of Wales — three castles that 
almost put to shame all other castles — Caernarvon, Conway, 
and Rhuddllan, are all near the highroad from Anglesea to 
Liverpool. They were his great fortresses to garrison North 
Wales — impregnable stations from which bloody troops 
could keep the Welsh in awe and reduce them to subjection. 

They were all spacious and magnificent, quite beyond the 
common military castles — the rooms and passages of royal 
size, and the prisons and alleys of dungeon narrowness. 
The great room at Conway Castle one hundred and thirty 
feet long, thirty feet wide, and corresponding height, set off 
with fine architectural tracery, and pierced with nine Gothic 
windows, was a place for royal entertainments. They are 
all gone to decay, but are majestic in their ruins — towers, 
and turrets, and wall, and bastions, dilapidated and crumb- 
ling, are now only shadows of what they must have been in 
the proud days of Edward I. Long sweeping passages 
within the long stretches of hollow walls, with secret exits 
and entrances — with stairs, and recesses, and guard-rooms, 
and receding niches in labyrinthian arrangement — show at 
every stage stations for gunners, and bowmen, and sentinels 
— everywhere power, and strength, and watchfulness, have 
left only their traces, but enough to suggest their chains and 
cruelty — 



548 GWRYCH CASTLE. 

" A time has been 

When loomed this broken pile complete. 
Big with the vanity of state, 
"lis now the raven's dark abode, 
"Ti8 now the apartment of the toad ; 
And here the fox securely feeds ; 
And here the poisonouE adder breeds, 
Concealed in ruins, moss, and weeds ; 
While ever and anon there falls 
Huge heaps of hoary mouldered walls." 

The old town of Conway is within the walls, which are 
turreted all round the town, and surmounted with four- 
and-twenty mural towers. There seems to be hardly a 
house in this old part of the town less than three hundred 
years old. I believe, however, with characteristic English 
progress, this district, like all others, is moving with a steady 
conservative march to the triumphs of steam and machinery. 

"We were hardly fairly under way, after leaving Conway, 
before we passed Gwrych Castle, the princely residence of a 
country gentleman. It is modern, I believe, and is one of the 
finest of that class of buildings Avhich I have seen, and comes 
fitly after the mossy and crumbled ruins of Conway and 
Caernarvon, as if to aid the imagination in restoring them 
to their mediaeval perfection — every angle seemed to be per- 
fect, and the outlines clear and sharp. Its massive towers, 
its long lines of turrets, its vast castellated masses and battle- 
ments, are relieved against the mountain, and contrast with 
surprising effect with forest, ravine and dell, while in front 
are lawns and groves and clumps and hillocks and farms, 
finished up, and kept with a horticultural husbandry worthy 
of such appointments, and enlivened by flocks and herds. 
Nothing to impair its tranquil beauty ! Nothing to disturb 
its harmonious repose ! Not an object that you would have 
desired to have removed — not a space that you would desire 
to have filled ! 

The ancient city of Chester — the frontier town of England 



CHESTER. 549 

— old, venerable, and peculiar — was the site of a Roman 
camp — castrum — hence Chester. We have seen so many 
Roman ruins, wherever we have been, that those of Ches- 
ter — crumbled, buried, and gone — had no attraction for us, 
while the English ruins and Chester oddities are novelties to 
us — the strange old houses with odd fronts, and windows pro- 
jecting out over the street and set with small panes of glass 
three inches square. In some streets the houses, above the 
first story, extend over the sidewalk, and there are shops 
on the level of the street — above those shops is the sidewalk, 
under the shelter of the second story — and again are shops 
on the level of the sidewalks and inside of them. There is 
a cathedral, a fine edifice originally, but being built of poor 
stone, the weather of ages has crumbled off all the corners 
and carvings, which gives it a most crumbly and decaying 
look — the same is true of many other buildings. The cas- 
tle is now converted into barracks and a City Hall- Every- 
thing in the streets and buildings is quaint and antediluvian 
in appearance, and nothing betokens much thrift or com- 
merce. It is the seat of a beautiful racecourse, and the races 
bring here vast throngs of people. It seems to me impossible 
to have a course more beautifully adapted to its purpose. 
The course is rather more than two miles round, while at a 
little distance from it, an elevated walk, a viaduct, a bridge, 
or a sweeping dikelike hill or terrace, overlooks the whole 
course. The whole presenting the general form of an am- 
phitheatre — the racecourse being at the bottom, like the 
ring of a circus — it must accommodate, conveniently, thou- 
sands and thousands of spectators. 

My run through Europe ended at Chester in 1854. The 
half hour between Chester and Liverpool was my first and 
last travel in Europe. — Let those who see,in a long-established 



550 CONCLUSION. 

order of social or political life, the approval of Divine Provi- 
dence — those who wonder that oppressions endure for ages 
while God is just, and those who think that in our own land 
alone are seen the footsteps of salutary progress, look back. 
In Chester we were first reminded, by existing ruins, that 
near two thousand years ago the Roman Empire had its foot 
on Britain — it is gone ! St. John's Church in Chester was 
founded by Ethelred, the Saxon — three hundred years later 
the Castle of Chester was built by the Normans, who trampled 
upon the Saxons, and drove the iron rivets and welded the 
iron bars of that feudal system that bound, hand and foot, 
the universal people — all gone! Chivalry and its private 
warfare is a romance of the past. The Druids and their 
bloody mysteries have passed away — the polytheism of the 
Roman has left no traces. The Protestant Cathedral of 
Chester was the dissolved abbey of St. Werburgh. When 
the Savior on the mountain was offered the kingdoms of the 
earth, he rejected them — when the offer was repeated to 
his soi-disant vicar on the hills, he accepted the kingdoms and 
the glory of them — How his glory has waned ! He has hardly 
a kingdom. England set the example of shaking off the 
triple crown. — Time is long, and to finite eyes capricious, bnt 
there is a law by which a thousand years sometimes do only 
the work of a day, and again a day does the work of a thou- 
sand years- The periods of gestation, of epochs and revo- 
lutions, are various and unknown to us. The cycles come 
round and human affairs sweep in great circles to a higher 
perfection. Printing began with the solid block of an entire 
page — after four hundred and fifty years it is there again in 
the better stereotype plate. Navigation began with the 
humble paddle and the canoe — after thousands of years it 
is there again in the swifter paddle-wheel and the steamer 
— In ancient times the popular choice appointed the leader, 
the commander, and the governor — the voice of the people 



CONCLUSION. 551 

again controls the nations — the opinion of mankind is the 
ultimate power. In Great Britain, the hustings — through 
its limited voices — but registers the deeper-seated and wider- 
spread popular feeling. Now — May, 1 860 — another reform 
bill, adding largely to the popular suffrage, has passed to a 
second reading without a division. In France the voice of 
universal suffrage — even by the ballot — under the first as 
well as the third Napoleon, has been appealed to as the 
necessary ratification of imperial power — and stranger still — 
now — 1860 — in Italy — where the will of the people has been 
so long stifled — universal suffrage has lifted up its voice in 
triumph, to direct the destinies of the land of the ancient 
republics, and has been called upon to change the map of 
Europe. 

It is not, however, in these great sweeps of time alone that 
reform and progress are shown. Everywhere the new of 
to-day is aggressive and triumphant — the new town is 
surrounding and absorbing the old town — the new machine 
— the new idea — the new man — the new law — and the 
people say amen. — Five boys were executed for a participa- 
tion in Lord George Gordon's riot. As they passed in a cart 
to the place of execution, " Oh, how they did cry," said 
Sir Robert Peel. Sir William Meredith, in 1777— says in 
Parliament — " There lies at this moment, under sentence to 
be burnt alive, a girl just turned of foui'teen — at her master's 
bidding she hid some whitewashed farthings under her stays 
— her master was hanged last Wednesday." " Mary Jones 
was executed under the shoplifting act. She had taken a 
piece of coarse linen, but being seen, she put it down — she 
was under nineteen — the mother of two children. Her defence 
was, ' That she lived in credit and wanted for nothing till a 
press-gang came and stole her husband — that since that, she 
had no bed to lie on, nothing for her children to eat, and 
they were almost naked, and perhaps she might have done 



552 CONCLUSION. 

something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.' " Her 
story was true, " but an example was thought necessary and 
she was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of some shop- 
keepers in Ludgate street — her child was sucking at her 
breast when she set out for Tyburn." The State stole her 
husband, the State killed the mother, and the State turned 
her babes adrift. Well might Sir William exclaim — " I do 
not believe that a fouler murder was ever committed against 
law than the murder of this woman by law." A bill to re- 
peal some of these cruel capital laws passed the Commons, 
but it was rejected by the Lords for the reason, that " It 
was an innovation and subversive of law." Now they are 
all repealed, and the press-gang is an obsolete idea. — To the 
blood and oppression of beautiful Ireland has succeeded peace 
and prosperity, and her present Majesty may live to see the 
universal Irish people — under the influence of education 
and the suffrage — as loyal as the Scotch or the English, 
and the thrift, and contentment, and growth of Ireland, as 
remarkable as its beauty. — " Out of the old fields springeth 
the new corn." The violence and blood of the past have 
mellowed and fertilized the soil for the present and the future. 
There is no nation in the world that has presented so long, 
so unceasing, so great, and so beneficial a course of progress 
and reform, in harmony with its national instinct, as Great 
Britain. And surely nowhere are exhibited greater evi- 
dence of the value of the right of private judgment, free 
discussion, free enterprise, and religious toleration. Her 
daughter, over the sea, is proud of the great ancestry, which 
has given her the same instinct, to work out as great a des- 
tiny in the New World. Let Mother and Daughter to- 
gether rejoice in the solidarity of their glory and their destiny 
as a family inheritance. 



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